NCJ Number
215817
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 23 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2006 Pages: 336-359
Date Published
September 2006
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This article draws on the bureaucratization theory of policing to analyze the characteristics of the European Police Office’s (Europol’s) counter-terrorism program.
Abstract
Despite the fact that Europol is governed by a political body, the European Union (EU), the author asserts that Europol nonetheless exhibits important features of professional expertise similar to those of other international police organizations. Europol, which is an international policing agency formed to promote law enforcement cooperation among the EU Member States, is unique in that it is the only international police force that is overseen by an international political body--the regulatory bodies of the European Union. Europol’s limited operations began in 1994, with a focus on drug enforcement and, later, organized crime. The author illustrates how over the years Europol has broadened its scope beyond the European Union, entering into cooperative agreements with policing agencies outside of Europe and with non-governmentally formed international policing organizations. However, Europol’s counter-terrorism programming focuses on distinctly European problems and on the criminal aspects of terrorism, which clashes at times with the anti-terrorist activities of other policing organizations that conceive of terrorists as enemies or unlawful combatants. The author argues that Europol’s focus on terrorism as a criminal activity is because European nations have greater expertise in confronting terrorism as a police matter, which is reinforced by the European public’s aversion to military actions. The analysis relied on archival sources, including official EU policy documents, reports and press releases, along with international news reports on Europol’s counter-terrorism activities and related European Union policies. Official documents and reports were drawn mainly from the official Web sites of Europol, the Council of the European Union, and Statewatch, a civil rights organization. News reports were drawn from LexisNexis. The analysis also relied on semi-structured interviews that were conducted with Europol personnel in the Netherlands and Washington, DC during spring and summer 2003. References