Ferret, Jérôme and Spenlehauer, Vincent (2009) Does Policing The Risk Society Hold the Road Risk? The British Journal of Criminology, vol.49 (n°2). pp. 150-164.

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Abstract

Ericson and Haggerty’s book, Policing the Risk Society (1997), sets out to annul Bittner’s classical,
coercion-based reading of the police and replace it with a radically new paradigm that foregrounds
the panoptical or knowledge work dimension of the police and its potential to serve the interests of
non-police social-disciplinary institutions. In this article, we test this neo-Foucauldian paradigm
on the basis of a body of research into road traffi c policing. As a result, we observe that though nonpolice
owner-managers of new risks challenge the societal immanence, centrality and publicness of
police organizations, with time, these challenges fail. We therefore argue that Ericson and Haggerty’s
notion of panoptical policing should be taken as a theoretical innovation, which, far from
eliminating Bittner’s paradigm, enhances it with a new force.