Background

The idea for this book emerged from a workshop organized by the four authors of this book in May 2020. The workshop brought together 16 practitioners and nine researchers with expertise in the field of port policing, port security, organized crime and border control. Funded by the British Academy, the ‘Secur.Port’ workshop was organized by the University of Essex and Strategic Hub for Organised Crime Research (SHOC) at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), with the support of Ghent University and Research Foundation Flanders. The event featured contributors from seaports including Melbourne (Australia); Antwerp (Belgium); Rotterdam (The Netherlands); Genoa (Italy); Montreal (Canada); New York and New Jersey (US) and Liverpool (UK). Two EU-funded projects also contributed to the overall discussion, namely the PASSAnT project (for new port security technologies), led by the Belgian Innovation Network for Security, Iungos, the Belgian Vias Institute and the Dutch Institute of Technology, and the European Union (EU) funded project ‘Improving Port Security in Western and Central Africa’, led by Expertise France.

Practitioners were asked to present on the two enforcement or security issues they deemed most relevant in their port of reference. A Q&A followed presentations and researchers acted as thematic discussants, contextualizing and analyzing the emerging themes from each session. These themes are presented in what follows as an informal introduction to the key material and debates covered in this book, which draws on projects the four authors have worked on separately and together in relation to crime, security and ports over the past five to ten years. In addition to the Secur.Port project, the authors wish to credit Research Foundation Flanders for funding the ‘Ports of Call’ research project, including workshops in Ghent (2019) and Brisbane (2019). This book should, therefore, be considered a product of the aforementioned research and knowledge exchanges, as well as a stepping stone for future research.

The main debates in the Secur.Port workshop – and consequently in this book – revolve around the following question: Why do ports embody such multifaceted security issues and what does this entail in practice for curbing crimes and governing the port space?