About the project
Several policing organizations are involved in crime preventative and proactive work in public spaces, through measures such as patrolling and surveillance. In general, the police are often associated with crime prevention, but contributors to situational crime prevention are also to be found within other public, private and volunteer organizations. Due to the broadening spectrum of contributors to crime prevention, the project builds on plural policing, aiming to highlight different policing actors’ involvement with proactive approaches to crime control.
Method
Representatives from the Norwegian police, private security companies and the Night Ravens are the subjects of this study, as they constitute essential urban area controllers that influence safety- and security measures in public spaces. Through observation and interviews, the project investigates their preventative work.
Objectives
The project aims to gather insight about policing bodies’ motivations for performing preventive measures in public spaces, and to provide new contributions to the policing literature. The project will shed light on current processes in the police organization, given that prevention is currently their primary strategy. At the same time, the study includes new contributors to preventive work in the Norwegian criminological research field, by including private and voluntary actors. By examining their rationales and purposes in their proactive work, a complex understanding of these actors’ mentalities and roles in the field can be generated, which aims to provide valuable knowledge about how policing bodies prevent crime and conduct control functions in public spaces.
Project period
The project will run for four years starting 1. September 2020.
Financing
The project is funded by the University of Oslo.