Editorial

The present special issue «Policing high-trust societies» of the Nordic Journal of Studies in Policing (NJSP) is devoted to policing societies that are characterised by high degrees of trust. The special issue has developed in cooperation with the Young Nordic Police Research Network¹. The network’s goal is to improve the understanding of policing in the respective nations by for instance gaining more knowledge about differences and similarities between the Nordic countries. This is in line with the overarching goal of NJSP of introducing new knowledge and research of police research, police science and policing in the Nordic countries.

In the introduction of this issue, special issue editor Synnøve Ugelvik (2016) guides us into the overall question of how different degrees of trust may impact policing and which main conditions this provides. She also offers a detailed review of how all the five contributions in their own way examines and discusses the importance of trust/mistrust on cooperation with police from different points of view, both in terms of type of policing and national context (Bradford & Jackson, 2016; Søgaard, Houborg & Tutenges, 2016; Davies, 2016; Hufnagel, 2016; Ugelvik, 2016).

The present issue also contains two commentary articles that discuss and thematise the perceived room for research in policing, in view of its interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary nature, both methodologically and theoretically (Winnæss & Helland, 2016; Hoel & Christensen, 2016). This polyphony is followed by a book of Kjöller’s book (2016) “A Swedish tiger: Testimonies from police employees that have dared to speak up”² about Swedish police employee’s experiences of trying to do something with experienced ethical dilemmas and violations aiming to influence how the Swedish police solve its social responsibilities (Bjørkelo, 2016).