This volume is a collection of interviews with policing leaders that explores their understanding of policing developments and current challenges in their own countries and internationally, and examines how they evaluate or interpret these developments. The book is based on the premise that police officials have a wealth of experience that can make significant contributions to our understanding of the prospects and problems of policing today.
In this book, ten police leaders from the continents of North America, Asia, Australasia, Africa, and Europe offer their combined experiences in policing. The interviews, conducted by experienced policing academics, capture how these officers personally, as well as through their organizations, have confronted many waves of change - political, social, and institutional. Interviews examine each professional's assessment of their career path; changes experienced during their career; their personal policing philosophy; problems and successes experienced in leadership; their views on the contribution of theory to practice; their experience of transnational relations; their understanding of nature of democratic policing; and their assessment of how policing will change in the future.
As police and policing across the world face a turning point, this book offers ideas and best practices from the front lines on ways to respond with vigor, creativity, and sensitivity to the challenges of repositioning police in the twenty-first century.
Bruce F. Baker is Professor of African Security at Coventry University, UK. His research and publications cover African policing, security and justice reform, local justice, and governance. His book, Security in Post-Conflict Africa: The Role of Non-State Policing (CRC Press, 2009) won the American Society of Criminology's Prize for Best Book in Comparative and International Criminology in 2010. He has undertaken research and consultancies in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, the Seychelles, Liberia, South Sudan, the Comoros, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Afghanistan.
Dilip K. Das is the founding president of the International Police Executive Symposium (IPES, www.ipes.info) and founding Editor-in-Chief of Police Practice and Research: An International Journal. After 14 years as a police executive, including time spent as a chief of police in India, Dr. Das moved to the United States, where he earned a Master's and doctorate in criminal justice. Dr. Das has authored, edited, and co-edited more than 30 books and numerous articles. He has traveled extensively throughout the world while engaged in comparative police research, as a visiting professor at various universities, to organize annual conferences of the IPES, and as a human rights consultant for the United Nations. He is Editor-in-Chief of two book series published by Taylor & Francis Group: "Advances in Police Theory and Practice" and "Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons".
