Introduction

Abstract

In John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp, we encounter two scenes in which a young child is warned before taking a swim in the Atlantic Ocean: ‘beware of the undertow’, for undertows are dangerous for the unwary. The book analyses ‘undertows’ in policing and the broader security structures in our societies.¹ I have made my way through what is generally called police research with crossovers to criminology. The conventional policing and criminal justice systems that I first started with have become part of a far broader ‘security architecture’ involving new transnational policing structures, military influences, an emerging private security market, a wide variety of regulators for different market segments and, last but not least, after 9/11, the growing role of security and intelligence services. Moreover, policing and this new ‘security architecture’ are affected fundamentally by innovations in science and technology. Today’s buzz words are restructuring, reconceptualisation, and reframing of policing and security. It is important to realise that this is not institutional tinkering but could very well indicate a covert and undebated paradigm shift. In all this, a permanent key question is ‘what is truly real’? In this wilderness of mirrors, do we see what we think we see and can we believe what we are told? Can we feel the undertow before it carries us away? Or, is this viewpoint too dramatic?