Police reform in the Netherlands: a dance between national steering and local performing.
| Verfasser | Cachet, Lex |
| Posten | Report |
1 Introduction
Since the Second World War the Dutch police system has been the subject of many debates, finally resulting in a new Police Act in 1993. However, the debate did not stop and has even intensified since 2005. The debates on how to organize, steer and control the police had technical, political and administrative dimensions. Elements of (perceived) insecurity have created a growing and maybe sometimes unreasonable pressure on police performance the last couple of years (Boutellier 2002, Terpstra and Van der Vijver 2006). The managerial/administrative problems of size and efficiency together with the rising public demand on performance made the government, politicians and the police search for answers, one of them being police reform. The Dutch police reform has been a constant and precarious balancing of power and authority; a balance between the distribution of power and authority within and around the police, between actors, or from one actor to another. What autonomy is to be given to partners, what freedom and control is required in decision-making, what level of discretion do partners get in decisions and more importantly in actions, who is responsible or can be hold accountable? These questions have become even more relevant the last decade, due to integrated local safety policies having been developed in which several different elements of safety issues are tackled by more and different partners. The police reform is about give and take, it is about empowerment and disempowerment (Savage 2007), or in other terms it is about direction and discretion. Government has "a special role within society to regulate actions of public interest" (Schnabel 2001: 17). She directs partners what (safety) issues to tackle and how, i.e. she sets the course how to reach desired social outcomes. Governments cannot handle everything themselves and they have to rely upon other actors, sectors and other governmental layers, and these should be involved in the policy formation and/or implementation (e.g. network management). By defining regulations the government can provide elbowroom--also policy freedom--to partners, or she can put limitations to their freedom. This discretion can be necessary for proper policy execution. All in all, discretion has to do with 'how' the government goes about her business.
The debates about the reform have been about the national government wanting to direct its local and regional partners more, while at the same time holding on to local performance. This leads us to our research question: What developments have taken place the last decades in the Dutch police systems with regard to the organization of the police and the way the police are steered and democratically controlled within a continuously evolving social and political context, and what assessment can be made of the centralizing and decentralizing tendencies within the system?
To be able to answer this research question we will describe the current police system in The Netherlands in section two, and in the third section we will put the police reform in a historical perspective to show the successive waves of reform.
As mentioned before the debate about police reform has intensified again in 2005. We will describe in section four what this reform discussion is about, and what the implications are of this recent police reform discussion. Direction and discretion can be substitutes in some respects but also complementary in other respects. Central and local steering for instance do not necessarily have to collide. They can also strengthen each other. We will use (elements of) direction and discretion to be able to assess the Dutch police reform in section five. In the last section some concluding remarks follow.
2 The current police system in the Netherlands
The Netherlands are a parliamentary democracy with a separation of powers between the legislature (parliament), the executive (government) and the judiciary (the courts). These powers are formally independent. The police, who have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, are a branch of the executive that must operate within the law. The current police system is based on the 1993 Police Act, which is the successor of the 1957 Police Act. The core of the 1993 Police Act is the up scaling from 148 municipal police forces and 17 districts of the national police into 25 police regions and one national support force, i.e. the National Police Services Agency (KLPD), which has several national tasks like Water police and highway surveillance, also serves as a coordinator and facilitator for the regional police. This organizational format has been operational since 1994. The size of the total police force grew from around 40,000 fulltime-equivalents (fte) to 53,500 fte in 2006. The regional forces vary in size, based on factors such as population size, crime levels and building density. The largest police force has close to ten times as many ftes compared to the smallest, which has 550 fte. This is a big difference to the former municipal forces which sometimes consisted of just 40 fte.
The core task of the police hasn't changed much from the old police act. 'The police have the task, subordinate to the competent authority and in accordance with the applicable rules of law, of ensuring effective law enforcement and rendering assistance to those who need it' (art. 2, Police Act 1993). Included in this description of police work are the maintenance of public order, the enforcement of the legal order through the criminal law and the performance of policing duties for the justice authorities (Police department 2004: 9).
Most regional forces are subdivided in a number of districts (territorial) and divisions (functional). A large part of the police officers work in basic units, i.e. neighborhood teams, because they have to act in very close vicinity of the general public. To enhance their relationships with the public the police base their approach on community policing. A basic unit operates from one or more police stations and its duties consist of many territorially bound activities, like daily patrols, mediating in disputes, and keeping in touch with the public and with businesses and institutions, neighborhood associations and other interest groups. Functional units are specialized in different aspects of policing, some of them operating on an inter-regional basis (Police department 2004: 16). Examples of specialized units are emergency services, arrest teams, police infiltration teams, and criminal investigation support teams.
The Netherlands have three governmental layers: at the national, provincial and municipal level, with no defined hierarchical relation. The Netherlands are a decentralized unitary state, which means that actions are organized based on the principle of 'decentralized, unless ...'. The current regional police system is also basically a decentralized system.
Governance of the police
Within the Dutch decentralized unitary state the need for protection by the police has always been accompanied by the need for protection against the police, i.e. against a strong and powerful central police force. Therefore, checks and balances traditionally characterize arrangements for steering and control of the Dutch police. No single body should have sole authority over the police (Van Sluis and Cachet 2007: 107). The authority is shared between the ministers of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (from now on called Interior) and of Justice on the one hand and municipal authorities on the other hand (Police department 2004: 10). At the municipal level, the mayor holds authority over and is responsible for the maintenance of public order or the rendering of assistance. Where the police are enforcing the criminal law or carrying out duties for the justice authorities, they act under the authority of the public prosecutor (art. 13, Police Act 1993). In carrying out these duties, the public prosecutors are supervised by the Board of Procurators General. The Minister of Justice is politically accountable for the work of the public prosecutor and the procurators general (Police department 2004: 10).
The minister of Interior together with the minister of Justice formulates the General Police Policy for a period of four years. Every two years Interior provides provisional information about the funding for each police force. The forces then decide internally how this budget will be spent (Police department 2004: 13). The force manager (see below), the chief public prosecutor and all the mayors in a region make up the executive board of the police force and take the formal policy decisions for the regional level. The policy is formulated taking into consideration the wishes of the municipalities, the police force and the national government. The regional council then determines the policy. In the regional tripartite consultation the force manager, together with the chief of police and the public prosecutor, make a detailed plan of operations within this policy framework.
According to chapter VIII of the 1993 Police Act the Minister of Interior distributes the police budget (art. 44), but he can also decide which rules regional forces have to follow (art. 45), or facilitate cooperation between regional forces (art. 46). In other words, the general management of the police forces is national. The ministry of Interior is also responsible for the management of the National Police Services Agency. The operational management of the 25 police forces is mainly determined regionally, with their own discretion in the exercise of their duties (Police department 2004: 10). The regional executive board does the administration, which encompasses the 'decisions about the organization, staffing, budget, annual accounts and the regional policy plan' (Beheer Beheerst 2005: 16).
The management and administration of the police has been delegated to the force manager, which most of the...
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