Introduction
The process of concentrating the control of an organization or an activity under a single authority is called centralization. Democratic countries have successfully implemented a centralized police system to manage the resources efficiently and enhance the efficiency of the department. The national police force ensures better communication between the authorities which is vital to counter-terrorism programs. In a centralized police force, the duplication of resources can be avoided.
Discussion
A centralized police system is a system in which a police institution or national police agency is centrally controlled and commanded through a vertical series of commands and such a police institution has unlimited authority throughout the territory of the country. Countries have varying police systems like Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, Keyna, Malaysia, and Chile have centralized police systems. In the national police force system, the overall command is designated by a single national police chief, management, and superintendent. Japan and Brazil have semi- centralized police systems. Semi-centralized is the system where the responsibility for law and order is entrusted to both the governments of the component prefectures, provinces, or states as well as the Federal government. The United States, India, and Pakistan have decentralized law enforcement systems which means the responsibility for law and order and the operational control, superintendence, and management of police agencies is the exclusive responsibility of the provinces or the state governments. The USA has the most decentralized law enforcement, categorized by a surprising amount of conflicting and duplicating jurisdictions. The United States police are organized as a local-level police force, sheriff and county police force, criminal investigation agencies, and the federal system. The American nation has always feared the nationalization of the police force and this fear has resulted in multiple police agencies which bring duplication and waste of services.
Today, the centralized system is more important than ever because of the growing terrorism in the country. Many European and Asian countries have a centralized or national police force. For instance, China Taiwan has a very effective centralized police force. The country has top-rated training courses for officers and a low crime rate (Aman). Having a centralized law enforcement system will strengthen FBI intelligence. The essential ingredient of a counterterrorism program is a centralized management structure, it will enable the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reinforce its intelligence programs, increase headquarters-field coordination, and establish intelligence as a priority at the FBI. Some may argue the problem of collecting the intelligence for strategic leadership, responsible for information technology at the Bureau (Cumming & Masse, 2007). Centralized decision-making can correct the deficiency in preventing terrorism by recognizing the role intelligence can play. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, make the FBI and CIA realize the importance of coordination and how lack of synchronization has jeopardized ongoing intelligence activities. With a decentralized system, it is not simple to bring agencies together efficiently to coordinate across multi-dimensional jurisdictional lines. Formal and informal coordination, which needs to be achieved secretly and quickly, such as arrests, need to be synchronized across multiple jurisdictional lines. In countries like France, having a centralized police force has eased the organizational challenge of managing local counterterrorism police efforts through hierarchical and centralized command. A centralized system allows authorities to have information-sharing arrangements, and better training programs to unify capabilities. In the case of narcotics trafficking and gang or organized corruption activity, which have local and international dimensions, and need information coordination and involvement among local and federal police agencies, a well-coordinated system (national police) can ensure the timely execution of these matters. According to James Q. Wilson on the police power of the state, the best method to uphold the accountability of the police is to retain the lines between the police department and the local community as short as possible. Public judgment carefully watches and influences law enforcement.
The perception about a centralized police force seems like a threat to democratic government and that national force tends to become too insensitive and too remote to the societies it serves. The developed democratic countries such as Israel, Denmark, and Belgium have enforced national police systems. Sweden joined the race by nationalizing its law enforcement in 1965. France also made the same changes by merging the Paris police and the Surete Nationale into one force. If centralization has anything to do with inconsistent democracy, then these countries would not have implemented it. To answer the question of whether the implementation of a national police force challenges the democracy of the country, it is important to understand political thought. Political scientists have done a lot of work that says that the senators serving large populations often seem more approachable to the general public than do their associates in the House. Likewise, the police are less concerned at the local level and more active at the larger level.
Centralization promotes the objective of impartial and equal conduct in still other ways. The larger an association is, the more it will incline to formalize and standardize its procedures and methods. In so doing, it will have a tendency to restrain the chances for random performance on the part of its fellows. The formalization and standardization of procedures and rules force the members of an institute to treat both colleagues and clients, including assistants, in a more neutral manner. The flexible area authorizing the application of discrimination or favoritism becomes consistently reduced. As Professor Grant McConnell has described that impersonality is the assurance of distinct freedom representative of the large unit. Another democratizing aspect eased by centralization is job flexibility. Larger establishments offer more room for their employees to move around than do slighter ones. The same law is inapplicable in centralized law enforcement. The policeman of a bigger force who finds himself in a spot that is not of his fondness has a much larger possible chance to make an alteration. This will incline them to feast on his own liberty and grow his own self-respect while at the same time shortening the capacity of his direct supervisors to practice unwarranted power over him. Work flexibility adds another democratizing part to a police organization, one that is slightly more indirect but one that, at the same time, maybe more significant. Job mobility tends to churn the membership of an organization, interjecting from time to time new members into the organization’s sub-units. In doing so, it may lessen the harmony and sense of strangeness in these sub-units and thus lean towards the police force not as much of a state within a state. Professor David Truman, in his milestone work, The Governmental Process, has described the requirement for cross pressures to create a self-governing society workable. The point that its associates are often stressed by dissimilar and occasionally contradictory benefits aids to retain them from radicalism and prepares them with a foundation for bearing other points of view. Job movement may benefit to surge these cross-pressures within a police institute by opening up its fellows to better interaction with associated workers of diverse upbringings and perspectives.
There are however further benefits that centralization can produce in terms of police democratization. To the degree that such centralism principals to growth in structural mass, it will also be likely to create the police force further eye-catching to job union organizers and to brand trade unionism additional striking to the cops. This can aid democratize police power in numerous ways. For one thing, the job union may interrupt a fence between the forces and a decision-making authority determined on spending them to escalate its own supremacy (GEORGE, 1970).
Throughout the rainy days of the Algerian disaster in France, the unions aided foil efforts by right-wing foundations in the higher police pyramid to brand the police assist as an instrument of radicalism. Trade unionism also contributes to the cop chance to yield share in such independent procedures as the vote of majors and the approval of results. It unlocks the paths for the airing of complaints and for contributing to policymaking. Trade unionism provides spokesmen, policemen, and publications of their own. These can upturn society’s information about its police while, all at once, providing that culture with points of contact for attaining the police department. Finally, trade unionism offers the cop some proof of identity with the job union measure usually. This may control the pull to the right which the forces, as signs of defenders of law and property, authority almost always experience.
Maximum West European cops are suitable for the job unions and these administrations have aided comfort the complications which so simply rise between society and police in a democracy. In all these republics, police union leaders have claimed that the forces continue as a systematically civilian body; in spite of everything, more belligerence would reduce the union’s authority and they have battled for such things as augmented employee learning, concentrated dependence on power, and enhanced public-police dealings. They also support stopping executive authorities from displaying discrimination or favoritism in their employees’ strategies.
There are many other profits that centralization, and its attendant feature of the significant institutes, may deliver. The greater the laws force, the well able it will be to launch wide-ranging teaching staff and educational facilities. Numerous social studies indicate that approval of democratic values and norms inclines to increase with improved learning. Large structural size also upsurges prospects for knowledge and these licenses amplified usage of resident workers. The more citizens in the police force, the further the force will yield to the structures of civil culture.
Lastly, I would discuss that although the local police are more controllable than the national one in practice actually it is the other way around. In Europe, assemblies have demonstrated much more enthusiasm for practicing police mistakes than community councils.
Conclusion
People have doubts about centralizing the police force. But the need of the time is to fully authorize the federal bureau of investigation so that terrorism can be handled more effectively. Inter-agency cooperation and fast communication can overcome beforehand terrorist cases. A centralized police force does not impose a threat to the democracy of the country but strengthens its ability to provide law enforcement to the community.
