Police collaboration with civil societyMissing People, women's shelters and crime victim shelters are examples of non-profit organizations that collaborate with the police. The study aims to map out key components of Swedish community policing and how they are put into practice in collaboration with non-profit organisations. This type of collaboration is relatively unexplored, even though it has long existed in various forms and appears to be increasing. Some are new collaboration partners; others show a long-term collaboration between civil society and the police.

The data was partly collected from interviews with police officers with the task to achieve and obtain collaboration with the civil society in different forms, and partly from representatives from non-profit organisations.

The result points at organizational mutual adaptation as necessary in long term partnerships to achieve shared problem solving. The police officers also face challenges within the organisation such as lack of support from colleges and management that aggravate an already difficult situation. Strategic police collaboration emerges when there is a need to gain peoples trust in priority areas, to undertake new challenges and face the problems of hate crimes and discrimination, and to solve new problems with juvenile criminality to mention a few examples.

The main conclusion is that collaboration in community policing is limited in time, place, organisation and person, which make collaboration strategies and partnerships precarious. Also, collaboration emerges when there is a critical need for forging and building strategic partnerships, rather than within the areas pointed out by the police authority. 

Author: Cecilia Jonsson, phd. Senior lecturer at the Department of Police Work, Linnaeus University, Växjö Sweden.