Making sense of police intelligence? The use of a cybernetic model in analysing information and power in police intelligence processes

Writing and research into policing has concerned issues of police action much more than their information and intelligence activities. Police themselves are now paying more attention to the latter for a number of reasons including transnational policing developments such as Europol, a post Cold War increase in concern with ‘transnational organised crime’, the application of the ‘new public management’ to police, a search for new police strategies to ‘fight’ crime and developing policing networks. It is argued that the resulting shift towards ‘intelligence‐led’ policing can best be analysed within the context of a cybernetic model of police intelligence systems that relates the general shift towards governance with the more specific developments in policing. The main elements of the system ‐ targeting, gathering, analysis and dissemination ‐ are discussed and the conclusion indicates some of the research questions provoked.