Old, New, Borrowed and Blue – Shifts In Modern Policing

Johanne Yttri Dahl, Nicholas R Fyfe, Helene Oppen Ingebrigtsen Gundhus, Paul Larsson, Pernille Erichsen Skjevrak, Siv Rebekka Runhovde and Annette Vestby

The British Journal of Criminology, 2022, vol. 62, issue 4, 931-947

Abstract: This article analyses ambiguity and complexity in proactive policing practices and identifies the paradox that despite the focus on increasing proactivity, police work remains strongly reactive. Drawing on a set of Norwegian case studies of policing in different domains, the article shows how under an overarching objective of ‘combating crime’, the distinctions between non-coercive (mainly proactive) forms of prevention or (mainly reactive) methods such as investigation or intelligence are seen as unimportant. This creates a demand for professionals working across different crime types, leading to a shift towards high policing in everyday life and tension between experts and generalists. Other, unintended consequences include a fragmentation of tasks and a more general and abstract way of policing. The result is pluralization and multiagency partnership strategies, where the police conduct high-policing tasks and external actors conduct low-policing tasks. These findings point to the emergence of new forms of hybrid of policing.

Keywords: policing; police methods; proactive policing; reactive policing; specialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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