This chapter critically examines the history of Singapore’s policing system, and argues that while Singapore may be seen as an authoritarian state, its system of policing – save for the existence of preventive detention laws – is largely democratic. During the colonial period, the police force was always short of money and policemen poorly paid, inept, and corrupt. Notwithstanding various reforms, the colonial police were unable to deal with the secret societies – the biggest threat to public order and safety – and relied on a mix of welfare, cooperation, and selective coercion. It was only after Singapore’s independence that local politicians introduced draconian preventive detention laws that succeeded in breaking the backs of the secret societies. Even so, the state did not rely only on these laws to police the population but also invested heavily in strengthening and boosting the police force, reforming it towards a more community-oriented form of policing.

This chapter studies the interaction between human rights lawyers and activists and political policing in China. While coercion is key to authoritarian governance, coercive and repressive measures in and of themselves do not produce regime resilience and deliver orders, compliance, and effective governance that is commonly observed in China. This chapter examines the systemic use of “soft repression,” which is preventive and preemptive in nature, characterized by surveillance, early intervention, and political persuasion. The process is informal and interactive i nwhich the Chinese political policing systems bring government pressure and other non-state forces to bear on target groups and individuals to achieve compliance. Subtle intimidation, consent under duress, relational repression, and voluntary detention, all hallmarks of China’s political policing, which is referred to as coercive political persuasion, have worked to constrain legitimate advocacy without frequently resorting to direct violence or blatant violation of legal rules.

The Gestapo gradually wrested enforcement authority from the courts between 1935 and 1939. A conflict over jurisdiction played out in national journals as the political police asserted a mandate of prevention. At first, case officers reported findings to prosecutors without commentary. After Himmler became Chief of German Police in June 1936, the Gestapo routinely withheld cases with insufficient evidence to convict and even dropped charges against a few remarkably loyal offenders in extraordinary circumstances. Enforcement authority remained with prosecutors in most cases. The Party and the Ministry of Justice exercised joint discretion built into the law to target highly public offences, recidivists, and political opponents presumed to be subversives. But the Gestapo increasingly encroached by prescribing a desired outcome in the case summary. Political police used these “recommendations,” backed by the power of protective custody, to gradually assert control over enforcement decisions by the judiciary. By 1939, the Gestapo determined who deserved to be punished based on their character, while the courts determined who could be punished based on available evidence.

The Gestapo balanced the scales of justice with the weights of people’s community from 1939 to 1942. Political police resolved twice as many cases while state prosecutors’ workload, but not conviction rates, dropped by a third. The Gestapo evaluated “political reliability” based on a range of socio-political behaviours distinguishing upstanding “racial comrades,” who embodied the values of people’s community, from subversive opponents who either rejected Nazism or embraced alien ideologies. Supporters might complain, but they sincerely apologized, cooperated, and usually conformed. Subversives advocated alternatives. At best, repeat offenders were simply chronic complainers. Private exchanges might be overlooked, but repeated public criticism was intolerable. Hinting toward a change of government was utterly unforgivable. Supporters who acted in “momentary weakness” received “psychological understanding” and educational warnings. Subversives who called for regime change, swayed other against Nazism, or were connected to targeted minorities faced the courts. Himmler’s mandate “to create and uphold the desired order” of a people’s community was finally being realized.

Chapter one explores different and overlapping studiesof repression to formulate an operational definition. It rejects the dominance of quantitative studies in the field and calls for more 'fine-grained' approaches. It concludes by defining repression as the process by which the dominant hegemonic order attempt to maintain power by destroying, rendering harmless or appeasing those organizations, people, groups, or ideologies that potentially threaten their position of power or privilege.

Behavioural data collection and analysis, and the beginnings of ‘mass surveillance’, can be traced back to early intelligence surveillance and political policing. Agents would gather information from multiple sources, both trivial and salient, about individuals with no prior contact with the criminal justice system, in an effort to predict their future behaviour. Often this happened in secret, and was justified by the threat of political violence. This chapter argues that much of the political thinking and technical logics of the contemporary intelligence surveillance environment have their origin in nineteenth-century political policing. It also argues that because this information gathering and analysis occurred in secret, it produced substantial social anxiety over the potential for inaccuracy, which ultimately filtered into subsequent legal protections.