Conflict or cooperation? Civil society, the police and crime prevention in vulnerable areas

Project description

Concerns about crime and violence in Sweden have prompted debates on how to address growing issues of insecurity and vulnerability. Research highlights the importance of civil society in strengthening trust in state institutions, but civil society actors can also instigate and worsen conflictual relations with the state that risk undermining efforts to prevent crime.

This project asks: How and why do civil society form conflictual or cooperative relations with police, and how can conflict be transformed into cooperation? Evidence-based knowledge on this question is crucial for understanding when police effectively can collaborate with civil society to promote security and reduce crime. Importantly, research must study not only successful partnerships, but also the mechanisms behind unsuccessful efforts.

The project will map varying levels of conflict and cooperation in police-civil society relations, exploring the form that police-civil society relations take, the public positioning of civil society actors vis-à-vis police, and the motivations of civil society actors in cooperating or not. The study will focus on strategically selected areas marked by socioeconomic marginalisation and insecurity in two Swedish medium-sized cities, using in-depth and comparatively, based on interviews and secondary sources.

By addressing civil society’s role and interactions with the police in Swedish crime prevention, the project will inform debates on state-society relations and the conditions for reducing vulnerability, insecurity and crime.