Book Review: Crime, Punishment, and Policing in China
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| Author | Bill Hebenton |
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1057567707299324 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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but without surrendering the traits and ambitions of their respective national cultures and traditions”
(p. 32). The dynamic between these common and state-specific interests has been evident on vari-
ous occasions. Thus, the ICPC was resurrected soon after the Second World War on the basis that
“international criminals” had done likewise. But the FBI subsequently withdrew, given its concerns
that the ICPC was coming under the influence of communist regimes (chapter 8). An important ques-
tion to emerge from this study, then, is whether those national cultures and traditions register any
significant changes as a consequence of the establishment of structured means of cooperation or
whether the “thickness” of these traits inevitably trumps the relatively “thin” relationships fostered
within the sphere of international policing.
The issues raised by Deflem’s analysis now feature prominently within criminology. Although he
suggests that criminology’s efforts in this regard have largely shied away from addressing broader
sociological questions of social control and have been correspondingly weakened by their greater
attention to a narrower police agenda of technical problem solving, the literature is nevertheless
increasingly attentive to issues of policy transfer, transnational policing, and the tension between the
local and the global. In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, these issues have
assumed an even greater relevance. Deflem suggests that one of the main impacts of those events has
been to stymie police cooperation, given that—as occurred during the First and Second World
Wars—“police institutions across the world have again drawn closer to the political centres of their
respective states to follow the pattern of cooperation and conflict as determined by the international
political scene” (p. 229). Nevertheless, he readily acknowledges that there exists considerable pres-
sure for police forces to cooperate at a far higher level with a view of preventing additional attacks,
albeit that greater police cooperation in turn necessitates a depoliticization of international crime.
Overall, although the careful analysis presented in this stimulating book makes it an important
account of police history, its wider...
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