Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law Enforcement/Scope

message: I have added those that I can think of so far. SGGH 21:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Great idea; we are finally sifting through all the articles and sorting them out!!! Dep. Garcia  ( Talk | Help Desk | Complaints )  15:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion of above

message: Something to keep in mind are other projects that we share articles with, which might help guide decisions about what to include (such a list could also be included on the main project page).
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Law- We shouldnt have any of theirs, we handle enforcement, not articles on what we are enforcing
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history- This covers the grey area of military police, which I have always thought ought to be left to the MILHIST project, because they are part of the military
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian crime- also, I don't think we should have actual crimes in our project, like famous robberies or so on
*Wikipedia:WikiProject British crime- see above
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Criminal Biography see the brit crime and aussie crime above
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology- articles on reasons why people offend, or studies into that, criminology and such, shouldn't be in this project i don't think
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains & Wikipedia:WikiProject Rapid transit (rail and rapid transit police - most of these articles appear to need work, and several are up for mergers) I think articles only about the transit police ought to be in our project
*Wikipedia:WikiProject FBI- this is a bit of a grey area, I think FBI articles should be in our project too, but make sure the FBI project tag is above ours
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour (not much overlap right now, but personally I’d like to see some more articles on police unionism) - oo... not sure about that one
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism and counter-terrorism (probably should be more overlap, since police agencies have always been involved in counter-terrorism; also check out their list of categories that defines the project’s scope) agencies that also handle other kinds of law enforcement (i.e. FBI but not CIA) can be in this project, but when it comes to terrorist personalities and such, they shouldnt be in
*Some more, but with uncertain status:
**User:MadMax/Organized crime (proposed) that would cover criminals and gangs, which we dont do
**Wikipedia:WikiProject Intelligence Agency (inactive)  inactive, but it would be CIA type things anyway
Of course, there are others, like national projects, but these seem to be our natural allies. Some articles, like Lieutenant should probably be left to the military folks, and the other articles proposed to be de-LE'd by EMT1871 also seem to be only marginally related to law enforcement. My understanding of the scope is that policing agencies are the meat of the project, and following from SGGH, the guiding principle should be how closely related the article is, and we shouldn't bother with peripheral topics. Given the nature of policing, which is almost limitless in what it includes in various contexts, there's some related subjects that make the scope less than obvious:
*private security - private agencies do what public police do in other contexts; Pinkerton's, for example, did a lot of contract work for police back in the day, and pioneered a lot of what would become "police work" in the US. It seems intuitive to not include private security articles such as Brinks, but Company police seem within our scope. (this appears to be more muddled in American policing). 
*intelligence - definitely a policing activity, but where is the line separating it as a military activity and not a policing activity? MI5, for example, doesn't have a LE tag, but is categorized as a law enforcement agency. (Btw, is necessary to have both a "Category:Law enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom" and a "Category:Law enforcement in the United Kingdom?") The article also says its modern role is similar to the FBI, which is in LE territory.
*counter-terrorism/national security (see above)
*crime/criminology - This doesn't seem to be a problem here, but I've looked at a lot of books that were supposed about police, and they turned out to be true crime books. Criminology, though, will have a lot of overlap where we should be consistent in making a distinction.
*forensics (and other 'police sciences') - same with criminology. Obviously a significant aspect of police investigations, but it'd be nice to have a clear line drawn. I think practical forensics like fingerprinting we can have, but theories and such are more sociology or biology, chemistry etc.
There undoubtedly will always be gray areas and exceptions to any rule we come up with (like Henry Fielding for the 50% rule), and some of my concerns are more academic than practical problems, but I wanted to see what others think. Compiling a list of relevant categories like the Terrorism WikiProject would probably be a good idea for us; I might get a chance tomorrow to do that. Ideally, I'd like to get some of this sorted out and end up with some clear hierarchy to refer to of articles that need work according to importance, and get some collaborative work going (Police desperately needs a major overhaul, and many of the "_____ police" articles are a collective mess). Oh yeah, and I agree with SGGH's lists so far. Bobanny 07:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope you don't mind Bobanny, but I've made my suggestions next to each of your points. SGGH 12:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Related/Overlapping WikiProjects (and some other thoughts)