Policing High-Trust Societies - Five Pieces to the Puzzle

Low-Trust Policing in a High-Trust Society

A plausible notion is that the trust in the Nordic police stems from a perception of the police as legitimate. Both procedurally: A rule-bound, fair force; and in terms of a good outcome: An orderly, safe community. How is this legitimacy established, in various areas of police work? Thomas Ugelvik discusses in his article the legitimacy of the immigration police – a part of the police that ordinary citizens hardly come into contact with. Nevertheless, the immigration police are a vital part of the state’s need to maintain control of its area (the overarching police task). Both the Norwegian police and the government in general enjoy a high level of legitimacy and trust. The question is what the state does with undesired individuals who are not imprisoned because of criminal activities, but who may still not be permitted to roam freely within the territory. The police and public prosecution deal with (suspected) criminals. But the police also deal with those not primarily involved in criminal activity, including people whose crimes merely pertain to breaches of the Immigration Act. What, if any, is the difference between policing the first and the latter group of individuals? The police’s employer, the state, requires an orderly territory, which implies the ability to efficiently remove disorderly and unwanted foreign individuals. At the same time, it is seen as imperative that the state that enforces its power in this manner, via its police, appears trustworthy, perhaps first and foremost to the citizens of the state, but also – for the purpose of creating peace and order in the detention centre – to the detainees. The immigration detention centre has been heavily criticised throughout its existence, and Ugelvik shows some of the challenged concerned with low-trust policing in an otherwise high-trust society.

A public perception that the police – in Ugelvik’s case immigration police specifically – are illegitimate or behave illegitimately, could damage the view that the government and police are trustworthy. The creation of legitimacy is a form of normative power, Ugelvik argues, and he discusses the symbolic legitimacy perpetually produced by the immigration police. This legitimacy of power must, I would suggest, be seen as seeping through all branches of police in order for a high-trust society to be maintained as such.

We see in Ugelvik’s article that the police working at the Norwegian Police Immigration Centre attempt to produce legitimacy through their work. This is an ongoing struggle, he argues, a continuous Sisyphean task. He also shows how the employees at the Immigration Detention Centre have limited police authority, but relatively recently were met with the requirement that they needed a certain training in order to be a more legitimate police function. He convincingly argues that this is one way the state produces trust from the public, while executing its most controlling police power. Ugelvik sees the police work at the detention centre so that “a specific institution and its design can be seen as an argumentative structure directed at the general public.” In other words: the immigration police’s work at the centre may establish legitimacy not only within the walls of the centre, but among the citizens in the community outside. In developing the theory on legitimacy and criminal justice as Tankebe and Liebling (2013) use it, Ugelvik shows how not only procedural legitimacy is important: The symbolic efforts may count just as much.

The immigration police police those who neither are nor are meant to be ‘one of us’, the citizens who to some extent are the primary concern of the state. Are the immigration police still policing in a high-trust society, when those policed are not full-fledged members of the society in question? Does the trust related to the immigration police impact only those policed there, or also the level of/type of trust in the police outside of the detention centre? The answer to the latter question seems definitely to be ‘yes’, according to Ugelvik’s study. Based on a study of various publicly available texts concerning the Norwegian immigration detention centre, and on his fieldwork within the centre, Ugelvik shows how rapidly the police and the government respond to public critique of this branch being illegitimate. This could be taken as a token that they acknowledge the importance of every branch of the police being perceived legitimate, and thus, I would argue, the significance of the public’s perpetual trust in them. As Ugelvik phrases it: “Schematically put, where legitimacy exists, it is the result of a process where a legitimacy claim is asserted by rulers and at least to some extent acknowledged by the ruled. This acknowledgement is never final, however. Police legitimacy should probably be conceptualised as a dynamic and heterogeneous phenomenon. [...] It is always piecemeal; it requires ongoing work.” I would suggest, following this, that the police and government in the high-trust societies are particularly concerned with how legitimate the citizens (‘the public’, in Ugelvik’s text) perceive them, because this perpetual perception is an important foundation of trust. He provides an interesting discussion of the ongoing struggle for legitimacy that the police – I would argue irrespective of which branch of police – must engage in to maintain a high level of public trust. His article contributes to a deeper understanding of both how legitimacy is affected by and communicated to the public, and how these processes shape government actions in a high-trust society.

Police Collaboration with Private Actors

Thomas Friis Søgaard, Espen Houborg and Sébastien Tutenges’ study provides valuable insight into how trust is built and plays out in another field of policing. It is not just the everyday man or woman who constitutes the civilian party of the high-trust societies. And ‘the police’ involves more policing functions than those stemming from state employment, also in the Nordic countries. The ‘Nordic police model’ has, as mentioned already, traditionally been state-centred; there has been one state police organisation, reluctant to outsource policing tasks to private actors such as private security services. The authors show how this situation is dynamically changing. They explore the partnership policing networks involving the police and nightclub bouncers, i.e. private security actors. The article builds on an extensive ethnographic case study of bouncers in Århus, Denmark, highlighting the process and importance of trust-building in the policing partnerships.

What does it take for these private actors with certain policing functions to trust the police? Previous research has shown that the relationships between bouncers and the police have been characterised by avoidance, distrust and antagonism. Friis Søgaard et al. show how in Denmark, a ‘strategic partnership’ between the police and the private security industry has developed the past 15 years or so with the explicit aim to reduce crime and disorder in selected areas. This form of cooperation is still regional and quite informal, but, they show, formalisation and national expansion are now being widely considered. This, they suggest, may represent a new era for the Danish – and then possibly also the Nordic – police model. The current article presents a contribution to the still quite limited literature of private policing in the Nordic countries (see, however, for the Norwegian context, Larsson & Gundhus, 2007; Lomell, 2007; Myhrer, 2011, Nøkleberg, 2016).

Friis Søgaard et al. describe how the collaboration with bouncers came from a governmental push, after the so-called “effective nightlife stress policy” has been implemented, implying that venue owners and bouncers use their private authority to exclude and refuse entrance to individuals who are members of mentioned gangs. The bouncers have legal powers accompanying their policing functions. They may apply wide discretion in their exercise of private property rights, which entitles them to exclude (identified by the police) undesired bikers and gang-related individuals. The police were coming out short in the ongoing ‘war’ on outlaw bikers and criminal gangs. Building on Shearing and Wood’s (2003) ‘nodal approach’ to policing practices within a state territory, used alongside Loader and Walker’s (2006) ‘anchored pluralism’, they show how the bouncers participate in an increasingly diversified policing landscape. Nightlife was insufficiently policed by the formal police, and the informal third-party policing by the bouncers – administered through the police-bouncer networks – was much better at establishing order in these particular areas. The Danish police have limited legal competence in private areas such as nightclubs – when nothing disorderly or illegal is going on. The cooperation gives them the possibility to extend their de facto control zone. A sort of extended crime prevention is enforced indirectly, extending further than the police powers would, if they were acting merely within their own competences.

Friis Søgaard et al. show that the police view the results of the partnership very positively. The police share information on those they deem undesirable; information sharing that serves to build an atmosphere of trust and relatedness between officers and bouncers. The bouncers are, however, expected to act on this information if they are to be deemed responsible professionals. Similar to Bradford and Jackson’s study in this current edition, we see that a strong exercise of in- and out-group control mechanisms is attempted; not, however, without resistance from those the police collaborate with.

For these networks to work, for the bouncers to be able and willing to trust and cooperate with the police, the authors find a number of factors to be necessary. A main focus of the article is the private security actors’ everyday experiences of collaboration with and (dis)trust in the police as partners. Partnership policing may, they suggest, lead to a shift both in the organisation of policing, and in the mentalities of policing. Both regular police and private security start thinking in each other’s terms, so to speak. The Århus practice may, they argue, be seen as a blurring of boundaries between public and private policing. However – and this is interesting in the context of Nordic states, all being rather protective ‘nanny states’ – the actual practices of the partnerships do not entail a reduction of state/police power. A reconfiguration of power, which, it seems fair to say, extends state police power into areas from which it was formerly restricted. In other words: a seeming dissolving of the Nordic unitary state police model may also/simultaneously be strengthening and widening the state (police) control over the territory.

Cooperating with the Police as an Act of Social Control

Nordic societies are perceived as cohesive, high-trust societies. Davies’ article shows that this ‘answer’ may depend on how the question was researched. In their article in the current edition, Bradford and Jackson show among other things that it does not really matter whether it is true that these societies are cohesive and high-trust. The important thing is how this is perceived. They provide in this paper a useful account of the procedural justice model’s view of why people trust and cooperate with the police. The particular contribution here concerns whether an individual perception (opposed to at the community level) of a fragmented social order leads to a withdrawal from the police. For the first time in the context of procedural justice literature, they test the extent to which broader social concerns are associated with propensities to cooperate with the police.

Bradford and Jackson have investigated why individuals are likely to contact and cooperate with the police, which is one way of measuring whether and to what extent they trust the police. They draw together social-psychological and sociological work to provide an empirical assessment of the associations between public trust and cooperation that locates individuals’ ideas and opinions of the police within their wider social context. Their study highlights the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship people have with the police. Some of their findings are as one might expect them to be, while other findings are more surprising. To some extent, they find, the perception of the police hinges on whether the police appear fair, engaged with the community, acting as protecting and serving a group the officers themselves are part of, and as an effective institution. Collaboration with the police may be based on fear of a decline in the order and morals of the community in general. An unusual finding in the context of police contact literature is that while satisfactory contact with police had a positive statistical impact on the level of trust – as one might expect – unsatisfactory contact had no significant impact.

They find that public cooperation is shaped both by people’s relationship with the police, but also, and not less important, by their relationship with each other. Cooperation may hinge on the perception of those who see themselves as part of a tighter community, where social cohesion and collective efficacy is experienced.

The article sheds light on why the police are contacted by individuals; seeing such contact and cooperation as an act constituting a certain kind of normative order. A myth from a film genre is that in parts of Italy, you contact the mafia, not the police, when you experience crime or see disorder. The mafia is seen as more effective. According to Bradford and Jackson’s research, the contacting of the police in real life affirms the police as a state institution as the appropriate institution to deal with their concerns, which again is based on a perception of the place they live in, and of those they share this place with. In the Nordic societies, a traditionally relatively high level of homogeneity may have contributed to a perception of strong and tight in-group communities, where the state/police attend adequately to their citizens.

Bradford and Jackson discover that when informal processes of social control were felt to be strong, people’s readiness to invoke formal agents of social control – the police – also tended to be higher. This, they argue, may make the job of those agents easier, and further enhances the abilities of residents and authorities in local areas to regulate crime and disorder. Other factors that affected the willingness to cooperate were related to both the occurrence and the perception of crime in the local area. A higher level of worry about crime was associated with greater cooperation. In a Nordic context, this, I would argue, may be relevant towards explaining a high level of trust: When the -citizens of these countries perceive themselves as living in cohesive societies, where ‘we’ care about each other – for better or for worse – there is more trust in the police authorities. But this perception of cohesion and trust may also be argued to have a flip side. Bradford and Jackson’s findings suggest that the police are seen as a “monopolistic force within the wider field of social ordering [which] pushes people toward acts of cooperation. Those who wish to assert order and stave off social threat are motivated to cooperate with police independently of their assessments of police.” This may imply, they argue, that some contact the police in order for them to control marginalised groups, which – by some – are considered threatening to a certain moral order. And as Bradford and Jackson explain the procedural justice model, lower levels of social cohesion and collective efficacy typically imply less trust in the police and lower propensities to engage in social control activity. The police are seen as accountable, as a representative of the authorities, for the decline in community cohesion – a breakdown and fragmentation of the society. I suggest that one way of understanding these findings is that Nordic high-trust societies have a real danger of negative insider/outsider policing. If the police (to some extent) are steered too much by what the public expect of them, and not by, for example, what the police know are the most widespread or serious crimes and disorder problems, this may result in biased policing and unnecessary repression of certain groups. On the other hand, one could argue that the role of the police – the state’s prolonged arm legitimately enforcing violence – precisely is to follow ‘their’ people’s perception of crime problems. For the majority who are more easily ‘heard’ by the police or politicians (or more easily voice their concerns), this would be beneficial. For minority groups less likely to contact and/or be listened to by the police, this is more problematic. This corresponds with the study of Ugelvik in this edition, where he shows that legitimate immigration policing in the detention centre is perceived differently between those policed there, and the general public. He shows that it is necessary for the police to be perceived by the public as sufficiently efficient, but also for the detainees (and also those working in the immigration police) to see the way they are treated as legitimate and trusted to be legal and fair.

From the procedural justice perspective, however, one could argue that individuals are taught what to expect and consider sufficient policing, coherent with the applicable laws. Fifty years ago, if your bicycle was stolen you would probably alert the local police, who would put at least a little effort into investigating the theft. If the same took place today, the only reason for alerting the police is for insurance purposes: Everyone is aware that the police have no resources for investigating this type of crime. This is something most people understand and accept; this lack of police activity does not impact the perception of procedural justice from the police. But what if we thought the theft was committed as part of a mobile international organised criminal raid? A perception within the Nordic countries that the police are trustworthy and efficient in their work, in addition to a low level of crime, could have several implications: One being the possibility of a stronger focus on international police cooperation, targeting what seems to be the real crime, the serious crime, coming from abroad and potentially flowing into the Nordic communities. Hufnagel gives in her article a thorough comparison between the UK and the Norwegian position in and towards the European Union’s police cooperation measures.

‘Third Party’ Status in EU Policing and Security

International police cooperation measures are, Hufnagel argues, very important for the security situation of a country. In line with Bradford and Jackson’s survey, it is fair to say that the perception of a safe society may lead to a higher level of trust in the police and the government’s ability to secure its citizens. From this perspective, a consideration of the UK security situation post-Brexit, or in the situation of opt-outs, related to the EU police cooperation, is highly relevant for solving the puzzle of high-trust societies. Hufnagel’s article in the present edition has increased interest after the recent (for many) unexpected, Brexit referendum in June 2016. While the UK has voted to leave the European Union, this far from leaves Hufnagel’s research on the UK opt-outs from policing and security cooperation measures in the Lisbon Treaty, less interesting. On the contrary. For one, there is still a two-year period before the exit may take place. An array of agreements between the Union and the UK is to be negotiated before that time. During the Brexit campaigning, Norway was often used as an example of how the British situation may become post-EU, given this small country’s position as an EEA member, and to a great extent strongly affiliated with EU. So, second, and particularly related to this edition, Hufnagel’s article compares the position of Norway with that of the UK before Brexit. Her article gives an excellent basis for comparison of the British situation after the exit, which thus implicitly also is an assessment of the Norwegian situation inside and outside of the EU police cooperation. To some extent, her article describes the Norwegian situation related to the EU security cooperation measures, through discussing the British possible future perspective. As an example, Norway’s accession agreement to the European Arrest Warrant has not been ratified by all EU member states, seemingly because some countries simply distrust a non-member state (an example being the Hungarian Constitutional Court finding extradition of Hungarian citizens to the non-EU states Norway and Iceland to be in violation of the Hungarian Constitution [von Bogdandy and Sonnevend, 2015, preface, fn. 2]). Norway is the only non-EU member among the Nordic countries, but as Hufnagel also shows, the country is closely connected with other countries through Nordic and the EU cooperation in crime control. This special position within Europe and among the Nordic countries, gives Hufnagel’s comparative article added value for this special issue. Her present study has recently been used by the English House of Lords in the Brexit debate, as an argument against Brexit in the police cooperation section.

Trust in the police should today not necessarily be limited to trust in the national police. While EU police cooperation measures may seem far removed from ‘ordinary’ policing, Hufnagel argues that several of the practical measures that UK wants to opt back into, are used on a day-to-day basis. This includes cooperation through the EU police and public prosecution institutions of Europol and Eurojust, Framework Decision on Joint Investigation Teams (JIT), the EU Agency for law enforcement training CEPOL, Schengen Information System (SIS) II and the European Arrest Warrant. These instruments warrant partly that non-national police may enforce their home-state competences abroad, e.g. by German police officers working in a JIT in Norway, partly that national police enforce their powers on behalf of another state’s crime control authorities, such as arresting and extraditing a wanted person following a European Arrest Warrant, and last but not least, national police acting because of information registered by another state’s police in the SIS II.

What does it imply to have third party status, as Norway presently has? Hufnagel’s article presents the legal situation of the UK after the opt-outs from the newest EU founding treaty revision, the Lisbon Treaty. She discusses the usefulness of the pertinent EU policing and security instruments to the UK police, and presents a highly relevant argumentation of benefits and disadvantages to the UK staying or leaving the Union – in a security and policing perspective. The focus of the paper includes primarily the question of UK security before and after Brexit with a possible comparison to Norway, and answers the question of whether the UK will become more like Norway in the matter of international police cooperation after a Brexit. The situation before Brexit is also discussed related to the previous opt-out debate, with the purpose of highlighting the UK’s already unstable position with regard to EU security instruments.

Hufnagel conducts an in-depth comparison between the various measures from the position as party and non-party to the Union. She also assesses the concerns of the UK connected to the different instruments, giving a good more general insight into pros and cons of the EU police cooperation measures.

For some of the measures, e.g. the JITs, Hufnagel shows that as an opting-out member of the EU, the UK would have lesser possibility to participate in the instruments than ‘proper’ third parties such as Norway would. Concerns related to opting-in to Europol and Eurojust instruments, she shows, were partly connected to the render of state sovereignty. This was not novel related to the police cooperation instruments. Hufnagel argues that the UK was hesitant about most EU criminal law cooperation measures since the very beginning. This may be interpreted as a definite lack of trust in the EU institution as such, and/or the countries within the Union. I would argue that this may be seen as a fundamental distrust from the UK side. On the outside, from the Norwegian point of view, this was not even up for discussion when Norway negotiated as close relations as she was allowed by the EU (Ugelvik, 2014, Chapter 15.4). While the UK shows a distrust in other European states and even in the EU institution itself, this may serve as an example of how Norway – even on the political level – is a high-trust society towards the outer world. Hufnagel also shows how the non-member state Norway applies more EU police and internal security instruments than most other EU member states. She suggests that this might be a result of more pressure on external EU partners, requiring a high level of compliance.

Norway has close cooperation with the other Nordic countries, also outside of the EU cooperation instruments. This, Hufnagel shows, is not the case with the UK, related to other European countries. Research shows that the Nordic cooperation more generally relies predominantly on personal contacts, informal networks and informal modes of cooperation, which has been claimed as the recipe for its success. In my opinion, this may be taken both as a token of trust between the police forces (or between individuals therein), but/and also as a symbol of the trust the citizens of this area have in the state authorities. In what may be perceived as less ‘successful’ and transparent societies, informal network policing could be considered less positively – not as ‘best practice’, as EU labelled it (European Council, General Secretariat, 2003: 16). Formalised procedures (whether circumvented or not) would normally be requirements showing strong rule of law commitment. And this permeation of ‘forced upon’ mutual trust in the development of the EU, especially in the field of policing and security, has recently been deemed by many commentators as the reason for much resistance among the citizens of the member states in the past few years.