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yes / Over the last quarter century post-conflict and post-authoritarian transitions in Latin America have been accompanied by a surge in social violence, acquisitive crime, and insecurity. These phenomena have been driven by an expanding international narcotics trade, by the long-term effects of civil war and counter-insurgency (resulting in, inter alia, an increased availability of small arms and a pervasive grammar of violence), and by structural stresses on society (unemployment, hyper-inflation, widening income inequality). Local police forces proved to be generally ineffective in preventing, resolving, or detecting such crime and forms of “new violence”3 due to corruption, frequent complicity in criminal networks, poor training and low pay, and the routine use of excessive force without due sanction. Why, then, have governments been slow to prioritize police reform and why have reform efforts borne largely “limited or nonexistent” long-term results? This chapter highlights a number of lessons suggested by various efforts to reform the police in Latin America over the period 1995-2010 . It focuses on two clusters of countries in Latin America. One is Brazil and the Southern Cone countries (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay), which made the transition to democracy from prolonged military authoritarian rule in the mid- to late 1980s. The other is Central America and the Andean region (principally El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Colombia), which emerged/have been emerging from armed conflict since the mid- 1990s. The chapter examines first the long history of international involvement in police and security sector reform in order to identify long-run tropes and path dependencies. It then focuses on a number of recurring themes: cycles of de- and re-militarization of the policing function; the “security gap” and “democratization dilemmas” involved in structural reforms; the opportunities offered by decentralization for more community-oriented police; and police capacity to resist reform and undermine accountability mechanisms.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka områdespoliser i Malmös uppfattningar om införandet av visitationszoner, särskilt vad gäller deras tro på zonernas effektivitet samt inverkan de kan ha på polisens förtroendeskapande arbete. Skälet till att Sverige infört visitationszoner är för att det anses fungera väl i Danmark, men trots detta har införandet av visitationszoner mött omfattande kritik i svensk media. Tidigare forskning inom fältet påvisar att visitationszoner som bäst har en liten effekt på brottslighet, men större konsekvenser på relationen mellan polisen och befolkningen. Studien tillämpar en kvalitativ ansats bestående av fem semistrukturerade intervjuer, där urvalet består av områdespoliser som arbetar i Malmö. Studiens resultat utmynnade i fyra olika teman, och till varje tema finns 2–3 tillhörande subteman. Studiens resultat är att politiska beslut fattas utan att man lyssnar på polisens faktiska behov och att bristande information skapar svårigheter för polisen att utföra sitt arbete på bästa sätt. Områdespoliserna har dessutom en låg tro på att visitationszoner kommer att bli ett effektivt brottsförebyggande och brottsbekämpande verktyg. Detta då de redan har möjlighet att visitera kriminella individer av intresse utifrån annan lagstiftning och att visitera alla individer i en visitationszon är för ineffektivt. Dessutom menar områdespoliserna även att förtroendet för polisen kommer att ta skada, i synnerhet om många oskyldiga personer drabbas av insatsen. Denna studie bidrar till att belysa områdespolisers uppfattningar av visitationszoner, hur politiska beslut påverkar och implementeras av poliser samt de hinder som Polismyndigheten möter. / The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions local police officers in Malmö have toward the establishment of visitation zones, particularly in regard to the measure’s efficiency and potential effect on the police’s trust-building efforts. The decision to establish visitation zones in Sweden rests on the basis that it has worked well in Denmark but has nonetheless been highly criticized in the media. Previous research has found that visitation zones have a marginal effect on crime, and at the same time pose a risk of negatively affecting the relationship between citizens and the police. The study takes a qualitative approach through the use of five semi structured interviews, and the sample consists of local police working in Malmö. The study resulted in four themes, and each theme had 2-3 sub themes. The study’s main findings are that political decisions are made without listening to the needs of the police, and that insufficient information creates difficulties for the police to do their work in the best possible way. The local police had low confidence that visitation zones will be an effective tool for crime prevention and crime-fighting, as they already have the possibility to search individuals of interest under other legislation, and because they believe that stopping and searching everyone within a visitation zone will be inefficient. Moreover, the local police believed that visitation zones will be detrimental to the trust in the police, especially if many innocent people are affected. This study helps to shed light on local police officers' perceptions of the establishment of visitation zones, and has contributed to a deeper understanding of how political decisions impact and are implemented by the police, and the obstacles faced by the Police Authority.

Dans le cadre de cette recherche doctorale, les analystes locales civiles, travaillant au sein de diverses zones de police belges, ont été étudiées dans la mesure où leur fonction est censée être au cœur de changements annoncés comme essentiels dans le fonctionnement de l’institution policière, en particulier en matière de planification de la politique policière et des activités opérationnelles.Au travers d’une étude empirique inductive et compréhensive du travail et des interactions des analystes au sein de divers états-majors policiers, ont ainsi été étudiés des pratiques et outils organisationnels de pilotage et d’évaluation de l’action policière, mais surtout les pratiques de celles et (plus rarement) ceux chargés d’en assumer la réalisation et d’appuyer la prise de décision par les hiérarchies policières. Cet examen éclaire au passage les activités organisatrices de la hiérarchie et celles d’acteurs opérationnels, à la fois opérateurs et premiers affectés par de telles pratiques et outils gestionnaires, que ce soit en devant les alimenter ou en voyant leurs tâches affectées par les usages qui en sont faits par la hiérarchie.La démarche adoptée est ainsi celle d’une investigation « par le bas » du sens d’une fonction, c’est-à-dire au travers de sa mise en œuvre concrète et quotidienne, et dans une large mesure éminemment technique, par ses acteurs attitrés. L’approche retenue s’est dès lors traduite par un travail combinant description ethnographique et théorisation ancrée à partir d’un matériau empirique constitué d’observations, d’entretiens et de documents glanés dans le cadre de cas sélectionnés en vertu d’un principe d’échantillonnage théorique, au fur et à mesure de l’avancement de l’analyse. / Doctorat en Criminologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim behind this work was to investigate whether the Police Authority's reorganization in 2015 had any impact on local policing. In order to get an answer to this, 8 local police officers were interviewed in different regions around the country. Due to the current situation with Covid-19, and geographical distances, these semi- structured interviews were conducted over the phone. This was because the interview participants were not willing to meet and also on the recommendation not to travel around Sweden.The results of the interviews showed that the majority of participants were dissatisfied with the reorganization. The implementation of the reorganization led to disappointment and dismissal among police employees, partly due to dissatisfaction with changes that led to the disappearance of important skills. The positive thing, on the other hand, was that communication and flexibility among different police regions had improved.The participants in the interview were the common conclusion that the Police Authority should listen to those who work in the field in order to create as good a authority as possible. / Syftet bakom detta arbete var att undersöka om Polismyndighetens omorganisation år 2015 haft någon påverkan på det lokala polisarbetet. För att få svar på detta intervjuades 8 lokalpoliser i olika regioner runtom i landet. På grund av den rådande situationen med Covid-19, samt geografiska avstånd, genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer på telefon. Detta berodde på att intervjudeltagarna inte var villiga att träffas och även på rekommendationen att inte resa runt i Sverige.Resultatet av intervjuerna visade på att majoriteten av deltagarna var missnöjda med omorganisationen. Genomförandet av omorganisationen ledde till besvikelse och uppsägningar bland de polisanställda, bland annat på grund av missnöje kring förändringar som gjorde att viktig kompetens försvann. Det positiva, å andra sidan, var att kommunikationen och flexibiliteten bland olika polisregioner blivit bättre. Intervjudeltagarnas gemensamma slutsats var att Polismyndigheten bör lyssna på de som arbetar ute på fält för att kunna skapa en sån bra myndighet som möjligt.

The aim is to study how the Police build rela­tions by publishing Facebook posts and how relation building is expressed in the form and content of the texts. More specifi­cally, the study examines the picture that the writing police and the police authorities paint of their activities, and the effect that the posts can be envisaged to have on the receivers.   The material consists of four posts from two police authorities, Växjö/Alvesta and Kalmar. This is ana­ly­sed with a method borrowed from systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) and close reading. The results are then interpreted on the basis of SFL and tradi­tional stylistic theory.   The result shows that the Facebook posts bring both opportunities and risks in building relations. The studied posts consist mostly of declarative sentences, with only a small proportion of exhortations and offers. No questions occur at all. The posts display a large stylistic breadth and varied content from the spheres of police activity, such as combating violence and drunkenness or dealing with missing persons and property.   There seems to be a will among the Police to establish contact with the general public, toning down the image of a strict authority with a monopoly on violence, and the offi­cers working for the authority appear as empathetic human beings. The conclusion is that the communication of the Police with the general public via Facebook is a balan­cing act between, on the one hand, seeming good-humoured and human, and on the other hand the risk of seeming less serious and authoritative. In texts with a serious content presented in a light-hearted form with ironic undertones, the Police risk under­mining their own authority. Despite this, the Facebook posts from the Police can be said to be in line with the catchwords of their activity: engaged, efficient and accessible. The Police also try to adjust the style of the posts to what is generally found on Facebook.