LIST OF PANELS

This panel seeks to identify what are the main challenges that societies are facing in security terms and how institutions, at their different levels of action, are implementing new responses adapted to this new landscape. Bearing in mind that any policy, and specially security-oriented ones, are structured in strategic, operational and tactical aspects, this panel provides a discussion framework for the analysis of new trends in informal violence, such as global jihadist terrorism or white supremacism, international organized crime and its impact at the national and local levels, with specific attention to international human beings trafficking -sexual and labour exploitation purposes-, drugs trafficking and local drugs dealing, and weapons trafficking as violence trigger, and last, but not least, new-related criminal incidents taking place in the cyberspace, which may rank from fraud and minor robberies to the disruption of basic services by attacking critical infrastructures and that present a new range of problems, going for identification of the authors, location or prosecution of crimes.

Emerging threats as the ones related with new patterns of terrorism, the internationalization of organized crime and the diversification of illicit traffics and related activities such as money laundering and fraud, or new cybercrimes attacking personal information and systems, are incrementing the number of tasks that security forces are assuming globally. However, special attention is paid to how policing strategies have changed, in order to provide prevention and response capabilities to these new trends, securing citizens rights. New units have been created in many law enforcement agencies, with new core training capabilities, such as in tactical care during multiple assault incidents, and new research and fighting tools against narcotraffic in their logistic and hierarchical structures, with an impact even in terms of international cooperation, as for instance is the case of the European Union.

How law enforcement and police work has changed in the last two decades at the strategic, operational and tactical levels, to the aforementioned changes and other ones, as new emerging challenges and security threats?

With this research question in mind, the main hypothesis for this panel are:

-       The new security threats are modifying traditional police work, looking for new models of response.

-       Tactics, techniques and procedures are changing too, to adjust the new needs to the existing protocols to tackle these new criminal phenomena.

-       International cooperation is gaining momentum, in terms of information-sharing, know-how sharing and common protocols in the persecution and prosecution of the new forms of crime.

-       New aspects, not previously considered part of the classical police work, are introduced, such as civil protection, tactical or combat casualty care, drills or multiagency cooperation and public-private partnership to respond to new security threats.

The final goal, thus, is to analyze how the changes in the security ecosystem have impacted into the development of public security policies in the ground, regarding the law enforcement force and its relation with criminal patterns and communities.

The expected papers in this panel should be focused on the analysis of how the different changes in the criminal international landscape have affected to law enforcement agencies work at the strategic, operational and tactical levels, from the policy changes to adjust to the new threats, to the implementation of this policy at the operational work or relation with community. The dynamism of the local, regional and international environment allows multiple approaches, as theoretical analysis, study cases and comparatives studies.

Methodologies should be adapted to the specific research topic. Consequently, papers using descriptive or analytical bibliographical methodologies will be considered, although quantitative and qualitative researches are too encouraged, since they may provide up to date detail of how security policies are coping with these new challenges at their different levels.

The panel covers different aspects, but some of the following lines of research are encouraged:

-       New models of response against intentional multiple victims incidents and terrorist complex coordinated attacks, involving new patterns of reaction such as the Immediate Action/Rapid Deployment (IARD), the Multiple Assault/Counter Terrorist Action Capabilities (MACTAC) or the integration of the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care guidelines in the response teams (Rescue Task Forces, Tactical Emergency Medical Support, et cetera).

-       New techniques developed in the fight against international organized crime and other transborder threats, involving new mechanisms of cooperation between different agencies and countries, and how they are implemented at the political and operational level, including logistics or jurisdictional issues, and how technology facilitates information sharing and international cooperation, among others.

-       Mechanisms of public and private coordination and partnerships in the fight against new forms of crime and insecurity, including the cooperation between the private security sector in the public security policies, multiagency cooperation with corporate security aspects, or the impact of common training between different agencies in terms of improving the quality of prevention and response.

-       Other topics as new or ad hoc functions for the law enforcement during the COVID19 pandemic, as guaranteeing the lockdown, surveillance, crowd control or CBRN management aspects; counter-cybercrime capabilities or the protection of critical infrastructures, among others are welcomed too.