Young People as Co‐producers in Policing across England. An Evaluation of the ‘Youth Commission’ on Police and Crime

This paper discusses a recent study on three ‘Youth Commission’ on police and crime projects. Professional viewpoints were interpreted to understand how they valued young people's participation and made sense of their experiences and capabilities. Framed within policing reforms, the ‘Youth Commission’ projects regard young people as co‐producers, who work in partnership with professionals to address police and crime issues. The focus is upon professionals and their relationships with young people for transformative participation and social outcomes. Working in partnerships showed interdependency but identifies further challenges if professionals do not truly value young people's participation.     

Neighborhood Organizations and Resident Assistance to Police1

Police and scholars note that successful crime fighting requires police and residents to “co‐produce” public safety. However, residents are often reluctant to get involved in policing initiatives or even report crimes they witness. One possible means of stimulating resident involvement in crime‐control activities is through neighborhood organizations. This research, conducted on 1,313 residents of 42 neighborhoods in western South Carolina, investigates whether neighborhood organization participation increases the likelihood of assisting police in crime‐control efforts. Results indicate that organization participants are more likely to assist police than are nonparticipants, even after controlling for social cohesion, perceptions of police legitimacy, various policing strategies, fear of crime, and demographic factors.     

Petty Crimes and Harassment: How Community Residents Understand Low-Level Enforcement in three High-Crime Neighborhoods in New York City

This paper examines how residents of high-crime communities understand so-called “quality of life” policing tactics and their effects on police-community relations. We demonstrate how focus groups offer a unique opportunity to understand how community members perceive police activity by giving research participants an opportunity to dialog with each other to collectively articulate the meanings of this complex issue. We draw on focus groups conducted in three New York neighborhoods with high levels of violence, police contact, poverty, and other indicators of concentrated disadvantage. One set of focus groups was conducted with Black and/or Latino males ages 16–20 living in each community, while another set was held with adult residents over age 30, who had lived in the community for at least 10 years. We closely examine how these two sets of community residents express concerns related to aggressive low-level enforcement actions in their communities and the concomitant issues of the over-policing of young men of color, the under-policing of what residents understand to be the primary threats to their personal safety, and the perceived lack of police accountability. We consider the implications of these findings for police-community relations more broadly.     

“It was totally different than what we had before”: Perceptions of urban militarism under Rio de Janeiro’s Pacifying Policing Units

Scholars argue that military ideologies, discourses, and practices are increasingly deployed in poor urban areas to control populations deemed “dangerous.” However, very little research exists to document how residents in targeted neighborhoods experience these security interventions. This article addresses this gap by considering the case of Rio de Janeiro’s UPP Program, wherein the military police occupied several of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, or low-income marginalized neighborhoods. The intervention began in 2008 and aimed to expel drug traffickers who had controlled these areas since the 1970s and install permanent policing precincts. While many studies suggest that the urban poor tend to reject aggressive policing practices, the UPP received widespread approval by favela residents in the first years of the occupation. This article draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the City of God, one of the first neighborhoods occupied by the UPP, to examine the factors underlying residents’ positive assessment of the UPP. I found that support for the UPP hinged on (a) its deviation from the brutal and ineffective military interventions deployed in the past; (b) the UPP’s ability to subdue violent drug traffickers and restore public security; (c) state investments in social services and resources attributed to the occupation; and (d) the race, gender, and age profiles of participants, wherein women, the elderly, and lighter-skinned residents reported greater approval for the UPP than young Black men. Ultimately, these findings suggest that variability between security interventions, their impact on public security and social development, and demographic diversity within targeted neighborhoods must be considered if we are to fully understand how the urban poor experience militarized security interventions.     

‘They are harsher to me than to my friend who is blonde’. Police critique among ethnic minority youth in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Young people belonging to categories and living in areas that are targeted by the police find more arguments for detailed police critique than others. When they narrate their assessments there is a series of experiential references being made, which can be used to sort out their police critique. This article draws on 20 interviews with ethnic minority youth in so-called vulnerable neighborhoods in Sweden. It shows how young people portray the police as sometimes profiling and racist, sometimes just and legitimate, and how they do so by comparisons and identifications. Comparisons within Sweden and identifications with police targets tend to result in more negative assessments whereas comparisons with countries of origin and identifications with non-targeted categories may result in more positive or mixed assessments. These young people also evaluate the police with reference to the stigmatization of their neighborhoods. To be stopped because you are associated with a residential area is described as deeply unfair, even if the police are polite, and observations of how the police change behavior in different areas promote critique. Our findings point to the importance of extending a criteria-based model of how today’s young people assess the police with a more social and ethnographic understanding.     

Corruption,Policing and Migration: Exploring the Interaction Between Migrant Workers and Police in Russia,Ukraine and the UK

The rights of migrant workers and their experiences in host countries have been high on the political agendas of Europe and beyond. This article uses data from 138 semi‐structured interviews conducted with migrant workers in the UK, Russia and Ukraine to study their relationships with the police in host countries. We aim to contribute to the literature on policing and migration by analysing three different host countries, and the experience of temporary migrant workers regarding policing within each country. We suggest that the interplay between the experiences of policing in home and host countries can provide important insights into the practicalities of policing, but should not be considered apart from the context of the ethnic origin of migrant workers.     

Narratives of Crime and Criminals: How Places Socially Construct the Crime Problem1

A common narrative about crime in the contemporary United States is that offenders are primarily young black men living in poor urban neighborhoods committing violent and drug‐related crimes. There is also a local context to community, crime, and fear that influences this narrative. In this article, I address how narratives of crime and criminals play out differently within particular places. The article is based on participant observation and interviews conducted in two high‐crime Boston‐area communities. Although both communities are concerned with stereotypical offenders, there are differential community constructions of crime, formed through interactions between crime narratives and place identities. In one, crime is a community problem, in which both offenders and victims are community members. In the other, outsiders commit crime against community members. Media portrayals of crime and community, community race and class identities, and concerns over neighborhood change all contribute to place‐specific framing of “the crime problem.” These frames, in turn, shape both intergroup dynamics and support for criminal justice policy.     

Cumulative and Relative Disadvantage as Long‐Term Determinants of Negative Self‐feelings*

We analyze the long‐term effects of neighborhood poverty and crime on negative self‐feelings of young adults. Cumulative and relative disadvantage explanations are tested with the interactive effect of (1) neighborhood and individual‐level economic disadvantage and (2) neighborhood crime and economic disadvantage. Results from a longitudinal study following adolescents to young adulthood show that the development of negative self‐feelings (a combination of depression, anxiety, and self‐derogation) is determined by relative, rather than cumulative disadvantage. The poor in affluent neighborhoods have the highest negative self‐feelings, while the relatively wealthy in poor neighborhoods have the lowest negative self‐feelings. Similarly, we find the highest increase in negative self‐feelings is found in an affluent neighborhood with crime and not in a poor neighborhood with crime.     

Rescaling the Sanctuary City: Police and Non‐Status Migrants in Ontario,Canada

Canadian cities pledge to provide access to municipal services to non‐status migrants and withhold information identifying non‐status migrants from federal immigration authorities. Despite these promises, local police continue to cooperate with the Canada Border Services Agency, which raises questions about the capacity of cities to honour their promises. An empirical study involved interviews with high‐ranking police officers in eight local jurisdictions in Ontario about police perceptions regarding their role in the enforcement of federal immigration law and their obligations to honour sanctuary‐city policies. The results show that many police officers believe they possess legal authority to report non‐status migrants to federal authorities. We suggest that this belief rests on misconceptions about the relationship between criminal law and immigration law, claims of jurisdictional immunity from municipal government, and distortions of the principles of policing in Canada. Rescaling of sanctuary policies to the provincial level may offer solutions.     

The Collateral Consequences of Prisonization: Racial Sorting,Carceral Identity,and Community Criminalization

In this paper, I employ analyses of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration to consider how high‐incarceration communities are impacted by socializing processes instilled in the prison. Collateral consequences researchers have found that neighborhoods with high rates of incarceration suffer cumulative disadvantage, intensified policing, and the criminalization of residents. But overlooked in this literature is how socializing processes that are institutionalized in the prison shape the criminalization of community residents as gang‐involved. For example, I argue that the fallout of sorting imprisoned Latinos into gang‐associated groups has been the emergence of prison‐based Norteña/o, Sureña/o, and Bulldog identities in criminalized Chicana/o neighborhoods, complicating the implications mass incarceration has for marginalized communities of color. The geographic concentration of both mass incarceration and its collateral consequences not only directs aggressive policing into these residential spaces but also structures a relationship between prison and neighborhood that reinforces the recognition of community members as criminal. The appearance of Norteña/o, Sureña/o, and Bulldog identities in Latina/o neighborhoods represents some of the unanticipated consequences mass incarceration has for high‐incarceration communities, both in terms of the exportation of prison culture to the street and in terms of the extension of the prison's ability to define and construct criminality.     

STRATEGIC RESPONSES TO THE POLICE AMONG INNER-CITY YOUTH

Research on police–citizen relations is largely focused on how police officers treat citizens, with much less attention given to how citizens behave toward officers. Several studies report that citizens' demeanor affects the way they are treated by police, but researchers have neglected the larger question of how citizens manage their contacts with officers more generally, outside the parameters of face-to-face encounters. The question is particularly salient for young males living in high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods—many of whom have frequent, negative contacts with or observations of the police. This article examines the contours of the youths' strategic responses to the police, drawing on in-depth interviews conducted in disadvantaged neighborhoods in St. Louis. Our analysis draws on Hirschman's framework of exit, voice, and loyalty as options available to individuals when dealing with problematic organizations.     

Exploring Minority Youths’ Police Encounters: A Qualitative Interpretive Meta-synthesis

Recent deaths by police of unarmed minority youth have raised important questions about the nature and outcomes of involuntary minority youth-police encounters. Youth are the most surveilled group of Americans and minority youth frequently live in neighborhoods disproportionately targeted for proactive policing (i.e., using broad police discretion to “target” those most likely to be engaged in criminal activity before criminal acts become apparent). Understanding the experiences of minority youth who encounter police officers is of critical concern for social workers in many practice and research areas. Social workers must examine how a minority person’s perceptions are formed through repeated, frequent, involuntary encounters with the police. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis was to capture these experiences through the voices of minority youth in recounting their contacts with the police. Four themes were identified: dangerous, controlling, prejudiced, and ineffective. Further reduction of these themes resulted in an overarching theme that captures the essences of these youth’s experiences: dehumanization. These results enhance understanding of minority youth experience with police officers and, thus, inform social work advocacy efforts around this issue in both practice and research arenas.     

“Because being fat means being sick”: children at risk of type 2 diabetes

This study addresses the social and cultural underpinnings that shape children’s risk of type 2 diabetes, as identified by a racially and economically diverse group of parents and their children living in Anaheim, California. Based on in-depth interviews with 28 adults and 17 children, we explored how they understood what constitutes “good health” in children and the aspects of their neighborhoods and communities that acted as resources or impediments to their children’s well-being. We found that parents and children employed a language of food that reflected a fear-based, medicalized orientation to food consumption. Although nearly all agreed that children should stay active, densely populated neighborhoods, apartment complexes with rigid outdoor rules, high crime rates, police surveillance, and diminished access to public parks and recreational facilities posed challenges. Similarly problematic were deficits in school lunch programs and the limited sometimes demeaning, conversations with healthcare professionals about diabetes risk and prevention. Together, these narratives identify key structural processes attendant to type 2 diabetes risk in children and call for a more politicized conversation regarding prevention strategies and public healthcare practices.     

Community policing in racialized communities: A potential role for police social work

ABSTRACT

Despite lack of strong empirical evidence about its effectiveness, community policing remains the approach of choice for police organizations in managing the complexity of crime and neighborhood disorder. It is also the preferred strategy for improving relations between police and racialized communities. Anchored in ongoing public conversations and protests about the tense relationships between police and racialized communities, this article offers a theoretical analysis of community policing. An overview of its objectives, principles, and use in Canada is first provided. Next, a critical reading of community policing is presented, which suggests that its end may be near, given that it has not fulfilled its promise of improved police-minority relations. Finally, the case of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa is discussed, to illustrate this failed promise. The author contends that, in the absence of a change model for transformation in police-minority relations, police social workers are an important but overlooked component of community policing. The article concludes with several recommendations, one of which is to employ police social workers in police organizations, since the challenge of community policing requires a multidisciplinary perspective that the police alone cannot provide.     

Policing “the Risky”: Technology and Surveillance in Everyday Patrol Work

While numerous surveillance and policing scholars argue that the rise of the surveillance society has normalized technological surveillance by police, the lack of empirical research makes it difficult to discern the true impact of risk management, security, and surveillance on police work. The present study uses in‐depth interviews and participant observation with two Canadian police agencies to explore the impact that police technologies have on police‐public interaction. From this analysis, we argue that the organizational shift toward risk‐oriented, intelligence‐led policing is not carried out on the ground. Instead, patrol officers often utilize technologies to legitimize the policing of the “usual suspects.”     

Good kids with ties to “deviant” peers: network strategies used by African American and Latino young men in violent neighborhoods

Adolescence can be a precarious time for young men of color growing in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of violence. For young men in those neighborhoods this may mean developing a suite of coping strategies that help them successfully navigate their neighborhood and school. Those strategies may include developing social ties with neighborhood residents that are engaged in “deviant” behavior. The aim of this paper study is to leverage the concept of resiliency to examine how social ties to the neighborhood-based “deviant” peers operate as protective factors. To answer this question we use qualitative data from African American and Latino boys and young men from neighborhoods in Chicago and Waukegan, IL who are between the ages of 14–25. Themes emerged that highlight short term positive impacts of social ties with “deviant” peers vs long term consequences. Implications for social work practice and future research are discussed.     

THE EFFECTS OF ASSET FORFEITURE ON POLICING: A PANEL APPROACH

Asset forfeiture has proven highly controversial in the United States since its expansion in 1984. Most contentious is the widespread policy that allows police agencies to keep the assets seized, which both proponents and critics assert changes police behavior. From newly developed panel data sets, we find some statistical support for the proposition that police agencies change the intensity and pattern of policing in response to forfeiture. However, in economic terms these effects are very weak and do not support the proposition that forfeiture provides vital funds and incentives for crime policing. (JEL H39, H71, K42)     

Policing immigrants or policing immigration? Understanding local law enforcement participation in immigration control

As the United States has expanded its immigration control strategies, police participation in immigration enforcement has increased in scope and intensity. Local law enforcement agencies contribute to immigration enforcement in three key ways: through the direct enforcement of immigration law, through cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and through the everyday policing of immigrant communities. These enforcement approaches have consequences for unauthorized immigrants, and for the agencies and officers tasked with providing them police services. This article reviews local law enforcement practices and argues that future research should move away from an exclusive examination of police policies towards immigrants, to consider how the policing of immigrants actually occurs on the ground. Moreover, we argue that as long as discretionary arrests funnel removable immigrants into the deportation system, some immigrant communities will perceive policing as fundamentally unfair and discriminatory.     

Applying a US Police Integrity Measurement Tool to the Eritrean Context: Perceptions of Top-Level Eritrean Police Officers Regarding Police Misconduct

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of data from a police integrity measurement survey administered to 107 top-level Eritrean police officers. Respondents were asked for their opinions regarding the seriousness of police misconduct, disciplinary action recommended, and their willingness to report fellow police officers engaged in such misconduct. The surveyed police officers considered some types of misconduct (e.g. off-duty work and accepting gifts) to be significantly less serious than others (e.g. opportunistic thefts from crime scenes and bribery). The findings suggest that the greater the seriousness of the offence, the more likely the officers were to recommend more severe disciplinary action. The survey evidence also indicates that, for six of the ten police misconduct cases, the majority of the respondents revealed they would report the misconduct, which suggests the police code of silence in the context of the Eritrean policing environment is weak.     

Crime, policing and social order: on the expressive nature of public confidence in policing

Public confidence in policing is receiving increasing attention from UK social scientists and policy-makers. The criminal justice system relies on legitimacy and consent to an extent unlike other public services: public support is vital if the police and other criminal justice agencies are to function both effectively and in accordance with democratic norms. Yet we know little about the forms of social perception that stand prior to public confidence and police legitimacy. Drawing on data from the 2003/2004 British Crime Survey and the 2006/2007 London Metropolitan Police Safer Neighbourhoods Survey, this paper suggests that people think about their local police in ways less to do with the risk of victimization (instrumental concerns about personal safety) and more to do with judgments of social cohesion and moral consensus (expressive concerns about neighbourhood stability, cohesion and loss of collective authority). Across England and Wales the police may not primarily be seen as providers of a narrow sense of personal security, held responsible for crime and safety. Instead the police may stand as symbolic 'moral guardians' of social stability and order, held responsible for community values and informal social controls. We also present evidence that public confidence in the London Metropolitan Police Service expresses broader social anxieties about long-term social change. We finish our paper with some thoughts on a sociological analysis of the cultural place of policing: confidence (and perhaps ultimately the legitimacy of the police) might just be wrapped up in broader public concerns about social order and moral consensus.