Special issue article Epidemic policing: The spreading of counter- radicalization in Denmark Mette-Louise Johansen Aarhus University, Denmark Abstract This article offers a theoretical and ethnographic account of what I term “epidemic policing.” The article introduces the notion of epidemic policing to show how Danish measures for coun- tering violent extremism are based on an epidemiological approach resembling the World Health Organization public health rationale, and how the field of countering violent extremism policing is itself expanding in epidemic ways. With an empirical starting point in ethnographic fieldwork among the police in Denmark’s second city, Aarhus, the article ponders the intersection between crime prevention and countering violent extremism in urban policing. The article shows that while traditional Danish crime prevention has been marked by conventional processes of secu- ritization and topographical forms of policing, a particular form of topological policing is implied in the security logics of countering violent extremism. This new form of policing entails a reconfi- guration of the epidemiological approach, including a diffusion of encoded risk categories, an expansion of institutional security infrastructures, and a de-territorialization of the space that is being policed. The article argues that this reconfiguration of Danish urban policing is a highly spatialized process, which has resulted in the co-production of intensified territorial con- trol and an inert potentiality of policing everywhere in the city. Keywords Epidemic policing, topological security, de-territorialization, epidemiology, countering violent extremism, Denmark Corresponding author: Mette-Louise Johansen, Department of Anthropology, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgaard Alle 20, Hoejbjerg 8270, Denmark. Email: mlej@cas.au.dk EPD: Society and Space 0(0) 1–18 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0263775819864119 journals.sagepub.com/home/epd