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As political interfaces, national borders are subject to extensive surveillance and policing within the interstate system. But what happens when the state's gatekeepers emerge from within the social body? How do such instances impact scholarly understandings of governance and surveillance? This chapter investigates these questions empirically, analyzing the Minuteman Project, a grassroots vigilante movement dedicated to directly policing the nation's borders. Situating the movement within the existing literature on “governmentality” and “community policing”, I analyze its history, ideology, practices and interactions with authorities, arguing that, despite their status as non-state actors, its members appropriate, enforce and extend many of the principles of governance and statecraft; whether, surveillance, policing, security or territoriality. Like community policing, the Minutemen highlight the pervasive and decentralized nature of government, social control and surveillance. In occupying and monitoring the border, the group serves as the state's “eyes and ears” without impinging upon its juridical or coercive capacities. However, in contrast to community policing, the Minutemen are not an instance of the state or police engaging or reaching down into the public, but represent a distinct segment of the public reaching up and aligning itself with the “arms” of the state.

The purpose of this study is to gain an “insider” understanding of contemporary methods and operations in parallel trading in the North District.

Drawing from in-depth interviews and field observations, we explore how this demand has led to two major consequences.

First, contemporary parallel trading has resulted in the rise of an organized system with coordinated roles and a range of workers moving in concert colloquially understood as the ant-moving-home (“螞蟻搬家” or “maangai bungaa”) approach. Second, the demand for parallel goods has led to alterations in the border landscape disturbances to daily order, shortages of daily goods and rising prices which, in turn, have led to organized protests around political identity and new challenges for policing the border.

Our objective is to gain an “insider” understanding of contemporary methods and operations in parallel trading in the North District. A second limitation is the problem of generalization. Given the relatively small number of interviews and limited time for field observations, this study cannot provide a generalized account of the operation of the grey economy in the North District.

This article has drawn from several data sources to construct a holistic understanding of parallel trading and the associated public disorder in the North District. While parallel trading exists in many other countries, the situation in Hong Kong is somewhat distinct, in part, because the border trading site involves “one country but two systems” and accordingly is associated with other problems in relation to public security, social disturbance and identity conflict. These newly emerged issues on policing, not covered in this study, are important to future research.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the national intelligence model (NIM) of policing in Britain has been affected by changing patterns of mobility, since its inception in 2004.

Conceptually, the paper draws on the “new mobilities paradigm”. Empirically, it is based on a small, exploratory study, comprising analysis of investigations carried out over a three‐month period in 2007 and 2008, by a serious and organised crime unit in a police force in England, and 11 interviews carried out in three police forces in England. The data are used for illustrative purposes only.

It is argued that increased levels of mobile criminality are impacting significantly on British police forces, placing considerable strain on the practical structures which underpin the NIM, and posing serious challenges to operational efficiency and effectiveness.

This paper makes a contribution by linking the social changes documented in the emergent social science field of “mobilities study” with changes in the organisation of criminality, particularly evident in the organisation of mobile criminality, which have presented routine opportunities for organised, transnational as well as “lower level” crime. Examining this phenomenon enables us to see that despite the attention paid to transnational policing in the organised crime literature, the burden of policing both organised and opportunistic crime continues to fall upon local police forces.

Addresses the rapid expansion of computer connectivity and the opportunities provided for criminals to exploit security vulnerabilities in the online environment.

International efforts to combat cyber‐crime are reviewed by evaluating the forms of mutual legal assistance (MLA) now in place.

Cyber‐crime is often traditional crime (e.g. fraud, identify theft, child pornography) albeit executed swiftly and to vast numbers of potential victims, as well as unauthorised access, damage and interference to computer systems. Most detrimental are malicious and exploit codes that interrupt computer operations on a global scale and along with other cyber‐crimes threaten e‐commerce. The cross‐national nature of most computer‐related crimes have rendered many time‐honoured methods of policing both domestically and in cross‐border situations ineffective even in advanced nations, while the “digital divide” provides “safe havens” for cyber‐criminals. In response to the threat of cyber‐crime there is an urgent need to reform methods of MLA and to develop trans‐national policing capability.

The international response is briefly outlined in the context of the United Nations (UN) Transnational Organised Crime Convention (in force from September 2003) and the Council of Europe's innovative Cyber‐crime Convention (in force from July 2004). In addition, the role of the UN, Interpol, other institutions and bi‐lateral, regional and other efforts aimed a creating a seamless web of enforcement against cyber‐criminals are described.

The potential for potent global enforcement mechanisms are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a typology of violent acts used against migrants using human smugglers. This paper relates the experiences of violence, coercion, and exploitation to migrants’ experiences of being smuggled across borders.

Data were collected using participant observation and semi-structured interviews among undocumented migrants and refugees who used human smugglers to enter Turkey and Greece. Fieldwork was conducted in Athens, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey over spring and summer 2011 and 2012.

This paper presents an adapted typology of violence using four categories of coercive violence: threats and pressure, physical force, deception and fraud, and coercion/advantage taking. Movement with human smugglers may involve the violation of consent and forms of exploitation resembling, but not equating to, human trafficking.

The findings are based on a non-probability snowball sample, and are not generalizable. Further research should engage with other methods such as respondent driven sampling to gain more accurate estimates of violent events among smuggled migrants.

Governments must respond appropriately when apprehending or detaining migrants, as many of them have been victimized by violence and may remain vulnerable because of continued threats from human smugglers.

This paper presents a typology of violent acts against migrants using human smugglers, and can be used to develop further research and improve professional practice.

Since the early 1980s, with the implementation of the policy of economic modernization, China has experienced a significant increase in crime. In order to meet the challenge of the rising crime rate under the new social and economic conditions, China has implemented a series of police reforms. Based on the newly promulgated Police Law and other relevant laws and regulations, discusses the organization, functions, powers and accountability issues of the contemporary Chinese police system.

During the last decade Croatia and Poland underwent a period of major political transformation from communist regimes to democratic forms of government. Although their police forces function within similar political frameworks, their operational agendas are somewhat different. Due to the differences in social and economic environments, as well as the recent war in Croatia, the challenges the two police forces faced in the transition period varied substantially. This paper analyzes and compares the processes of change encountered by the two law enforcement agencies.