Media MonitorSUBSCRIBE 115373 total results. Showing results 15701 to 15720 «782783784785786787788789790Next ›Last » A two-track system: Police officer discretion in enforcement of personal use and possession of drugs in Sweden’s zero-tolerance setting National drug policies and legislation set the framework for the police's work against drugs. However, police officers use their discretion to implement policy into everyday drug law enforcement. This study is based on qualitative interviews with 19 police officers in Malmö, Sweden, with the aim of analyzing police officers’ views on and actions in relation to personal use and possession of drugs in a zero-tolerance drug policy setting. Our analysis focuses on three main areas: (1) police officers’ views on the criminalization of drug possession for personal use, (2) how they perceive and categorize people who use drugs (PWUD), and (3) how they apply discretion when handling complex cases, making decisions, and prioritizing enforcement actions. The results show that the police officers support the continued criminalization of minor drug offenses, motivated by a deterrence and prevention-based perspective and by a strategic use of the law to reach higher levels of drug market hierarchies. However, the police used categorization work to differentiate between user groups, resulting in an informal two-track system in which one leans toward de facto depenalization and harm reduction principles for marginalized PWUD and the other favors punitive interventions for youth and first-time offenders. The study also demonstrates how police discretion can involve uncertainty but also flexibility, allowing for more experience-based and context-sensitive judgments in the face of complex situations. Sweden constitutes an interesting case for studying how police officers relate to punitive drug policies. The study emphasizes the critical need to examine how drug policy unfolds locally, shaped by police culture and discretion in everyday practice. The way discretion is exercised can have a profound impact on the risks and opportunities faced by PWUD, with significant implications for both public health and justice outcomes. European Journal of Criminology 3/4/2025 Research article Perceptions and experiences with police among people who use drugs in the initial year of British Columbia’s decriminalization of illegal drugs policy On January 31, 2023, British Columbia (BC) launched a 3-year pilot initiative decriminalizing the possession of up to 2.5 g of select illegal drugs. The policy aims to reduce stigma, address racial disparities in drug law enforcement, and improve police relations with people who use drugs (PWUD). As part of a national evaluation, we conducted qualitative interviews with 100 PWUD who reported using drugs at least three times a week across BC between October 2023 and February 2024. Participants, diverse in sociodemographics, drug use patterns, and police interaction histories, largely reported an adversarial relationship with police, marked by historical mistreatment and the targeting of individuals based on aspects of their social identity, such as ethnicity, housing status, and other visible markers. Despite police generally adhering to the policy, some participants reported unlawful drug seizures, reinforcing mistrust. Although some noted reduced fear of police, most felt their negative perceptions persisted post-decriminalization, highlighting a need for further police education and training to address stigma and inconsistent enforcement. Criminology and Public Policy 3/4/2025 Research article Writing at the Speed of Hype: Officers’ Post-Experimental Perceptions of AI Report Writing This study examines patrol officer and supervisor perceptions of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to assist with officer report writing. We compare attitudes among patrol officers randomly assigned to use the AI tool against those who were not. Following a randomized controlled trial within a single agency, we conducted a post-intervention survey of patrol officers and supervisors (69% response rate, n=96). Patrol officers expressed generally favorable perceptions toward AI-assisted report writing, though no significant differences emerged between treatment and control groups in perceived utility, speed improvement, or quality enhancement. Despite these non-significant differences, 48% of treated officers reported time savings. Supervisors perceived noticeable improvements in report quality, completeness, and writing efficiency. Officer perceptions of AI-assisted report writing were broadly positive but did not differ significantly by experimental exposure. Agencies adopting similar tools should anticipate mixed officer reactions and prioritize training, realistic expectations, and supervisor support CRIMRXIV 3/4/2025 Research article Police deployment in armed conflict: a typology and multi-case application Armed insurgency is one of the most extreme types of crisis that a state can face, but we know little about the role of the police in the context of domestic armed conflict. A cursory examination of the empirical record indicates that there is enormous variation in whether the police are tasked with counterinsurgency tasks; whether both the police and the military are deployed; and if so, whether it is the police or the military that lead the counterinsurgency effort. This manuscript introduces a conceptual framework of five different models of policing responses to insurgency: police vacuum, status quo policing, expanded policing, supportive policing, and counterinsurgency policing. The analytical traction of this framework is probed with three cases which saw varied police responses: the Malayan insurgency (1948-1960); the civil war in Nepal (1996-2006), and Myanmar (1948-present). The empirics show that the framework offers the flexibility to capture complex subnational and temporal variation in policing strategies. By developing meaningful and distinct categories of policing in conflict, this framework provides a tool to engage in deeper comparative work by mapping and measuring state responses to armed challengers. By centring the role of the police in armed conflict and probing empirical variation which has previously gone unstudied, the manuscript points to promising avenues for future research on policing, both inside and outside of armed conflict. Policing and Society 3/4/2025 Research article Codification, confusion and crisis: police-government relations when responding to February 2022 protests in Ottawa and Wellington This article examines whether the codification of police government relations makes a difference in a crisis. Drawing on detailed official reports about similar protests and occupations of capitals in Ottawa, Canada and Wellington, New Zealand in February 2022, it concludes that codification did not make an appreciable difference to either governmental or police conduct. Governing bodies were reluctant to take responsibility for policing decisions even when they had unfettered statutory powers to do so. At the same time, New Zealand politicians may have pressured the New Zealand Police to engage in an early and unsuccessful attempt to clear the occupation despite broad statutory guarantees of police operational independence, even though the politicians, the police and the inquiry all denied that there was political interference. The article clarifies thinking about police independence by problematising the idea of police operational independence by focusing on policy of operations decisions, specifically whether the police should wear riot gear when policing protests. It also examines the under-studied issue of the relevance of the police chain of command under different conceptions of police independence. It concludes that codification alone will not make police-government relations more transparent or democratic. Policing and Society - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 Research article Post-election riots and the dilemmas of democratic policing: recent experience in the United States and Brazil Despite significant differences between policing in the United States and Brazil, the post-election riots in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, and in BrasÃlia on January 8, 2023, followed similar trajectories. In both cases supporters of the defeated presidential incumbent broke into and ransacked key government buildings, hoping to overturn the results of the election. In both cases the initial response by the police was inadequate, but the police eventually dispelled the rioters, and the new president took office. Comparing the events of January 6 and January 8 highlights three tensions associated with the policing of democratic societies in an era marked by a global upswing in populist politics: the need to calibrate the response to violent political protest, avoiding both overreaction and underreaction; the tension between two different understandings what it means for the police to be loyal to democracy; and the difficulty of connecting the police with the wider society while protecting against infiltration and cooptation by antidemocratic groups. Policing and Society - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 Research article Urban disorder in democratic transitions: Ukraine’s municipal policing debates in comparative perspect The paper examines debates on police decentralisation in Ukraine since 2014, when Russia first attacked Ukraine and the country began a democratic transition, through February 2022, when the current full-scale invasion began. Although Ukraine’s constitution gives no policing authority to local governments, municipalities have created their own de facto local policing services, ‘municipal guards.’ In Ukraine, unlike nearly all other post-Soviet states, war and democratic transition have brought onto the political agenda debates about policing decentralisation for urban public order, incivilities, and property rights. Previous studies of post-authoritarian police reform have neglected such debates, focusing on criminal law and human rights. We argue that clarifying the role of local authorities in controlling public order is key to the success of police reform and should receive greater political and scholarly attention. Indeed, there is a strong case that ‘democratic policing’ in modern states requires some local control of public order. Policing and Society - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 Research article Harmful or helpful? Trust in the police after a shock: a test of (dual) expectancy disconfirmation theory Can social and economic macro-social shocks significantly affect citizens’ trust in the police? We explore the credibility of dual expectancy disconfirmation theory whereby the trust in the police is the result of the responsibility attributed to the government for a shock combined with the evaluation of police action as helpful vs. harmful during the following crisis. Based on European Social Survey (ESS) data, we compare countries under shock with the rest of the EU states (Greece: economic hardship; France: terrorism; Spain: elite conflict. We show that, after a shock, trust in the police evolves as a result of a combined (dual)assessment of the government and the police by the citizens. Firstly, when a government is clearly responsible for the shock, it takes the blame, which spills over to the police. Conversely, when a government is confronted by a shock outside its decision-making realm, no blame spills over to the police. Secondly, the positive evaluation of the police depends on whether their intervention corresponds to the protective role they have been assigned: they are evaluated positively when they tackle a threat, and negatively when they forcibly prevent citizens from exercising their political rights. Thirdly, differential effects are always observable: segments of society which are exposed to more harm from the police become more reluctant to trust the police. This paper presents a theoretical backing for those studies that have previously dealt with shocks but were mostly based on micro level theories of police-citizens interactions with only limited theoretical attempts to consider the macro-level contex Policing and Society 3/4/2025 Research article Politicians and police in the face of democratic change in Chile and Colombia This article draws on theories of institutional change, to offer a comparative analysis of politician-police relationships during processes of political change by examining Carabineros de Chile and the Colombian National Police. It begins with Chile’s transition to a new democratic regime under President Aylwin in 1990. On the other hand, the Colombian case study begins with the debate that led to the approval of a new constitution in 1991. The authors use the analysis of institutional change by [Mahoney, J., and Thelen, K., Eds. 2009. Explaining institutional change: ambiguity, agency, and power. New York: Cambridge University Press], to argue that institutional change is produced by the interaction between the political context, the characteristics of the target institution and the agents of change. The political context may favour institutional change or, conversely, give rise to coalitions with strong veto power. The Carabineros and the Colombian National Police developed strategies to retain influence over the change processes, determining their depth and scope and often straying from the original political objectives. Both institutions aim to strengthen their bureaucratic veto power over time through two fundamental variables, which researchers call police veto power and the administrative and managerial capacity to propose alternative policies to civilian authorities. The mechanisms police use to respond to change proposals are: institutional blocking; strategic policy substitution; negotiated autonomy; and, adaptive implementation. Policing and Society - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 Research article Police appeal for volunteers to lead cadet units A police force is appealing for volunteers to lead cadet units across a county which, without them, could be at risk of closure. BBC 3/4/2025 News Report on the 2024 New South Wales Drug Summit AUSTRALIA: The NSW Government announced in July 2024 that it would hold a drug summit to bring people together to find ‘new ways forward’ to improve outcomes for people impacted by drugs in NSW. New South Wales Government 3/4/2025 Report NSW Government receives Drug Summit report AUSTRALIA: ​The NSW Government has today received the Drug Summit report from Co-Chairs Hon. Carmel Tebbutt and John Brogden AM. The Drug Summit delivered on an election commitment from the Minns Labor Government to bring together those with lived and living experience, frontline workers and experts in addiction and illicit drug use. The summit listened to over 400 participants as well as 3,600 written submissions, over four days across metropolitan Sydney, Griffith and Lismore. New South Wales Government 3/4/2025 News Police should back off drug users, says report AUSTRALIA: The Drug Summit Report published on Thursday recommends having the sentencing period for adults convicted of possessing or using drugs. The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 News National Insurance raid ‘risks forcing police to axe 3,600 officers’ Funding black hole will impact on front-line policing, warn Tories The Telegraph - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 News NSW prosecutors appeal no-jail sentence for Kristian White over manslaughter of 95-year-old Clare Nowland AUSTRALIA: Office of Director of Public Prosecutions calls former police officer’s two-year community corrections order inadequate. The Guardian 3/4/2025 News More than 100 extra police to go to Logan as service struggles with DV jobs AUSTRALIA: More than 100 extra police will be sent to Logan after revelations of a huge number of vacancies as officers continue to struggle with domestic violence jobs. The Courier Mail (Australia) 3/4/2025 News Police wrongly arrested, used force on, bystanders filming incident NEW ZEALAND: Two cousins who were arrested after filming police in the Auckland CBD were unlawfully detained and then subjected to unjustified force in 2022, an inquiry has revealed. 1 News (New Zealand) 3/4/2025 News The vital role of neighbourhood policing and community intelligence in tackling Europol’s SOC threats Europol’s recently published 2025 Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) highlighted the evolving trends of SOC on the international stage; former South Wales Police detective Steve Dodd, a subject matter expert on intelligence professionalisation and advocate of the community intelligence-led policing methodology, argues that the SOCTA also reinforces the key role that frontline officers and the Neighbourhood Policing Pathway have to play in tackling that SOC threat. Policing Insight - Subscription at source 3/4/2025 Analysis, Feature, Opinion Force launches video call option for domestic abuse victims Gloucestershire Police has introduced Rapid Video Response (RVR), a new option allowing domestic abuse victims to speak with officers via video call. Emergency Services Times 3/4/2025 News Norfolk PCC teams up with charity to offer free bystander training The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk is partnering with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust to drive awareness of street harassment and upskill and empower bystanders across Norfolk to deal with all harassment types. Emergency Services Times 3/4/2025 News «782783784785786787788789790Next ›Last » Upcoming events View all events
