Practical criminologies: Sensemaking and proactive policing

Abstract

Strategic and future-oriented policing Events, objects, and people will often present police with a wide range of possible interpretations – yet some become the basis for action, and others do not. To understand why and how this happens, policing itself must be part of the explanation. Police are increasingly expected to self-initiate both preventive and reactive crime control measures, and current proactive ideals in policing undergird the prevalence of intelligence methods and interagency partnerships. Thus, there is a need to improve our understanding of the relationship between police interpretations of events, and action. Work-related crime as case This thesis begins from a study of ‘work-related crime (‘WRC’) to explore how practical and cultural resources contribute to how crime in this area is explained, and which sanctions and preventive measures are considered relevant and feasible. WRC is a policy term which captures a range of profit-motivated offences committed in relation to the labour market, for example labour exploitation, wage theft, tax evasion and environmental crimes. Here, specialist units within police organisations are required to collaborate internally, as well as with other key agencies such as the Labour and Welfare Administration, the Labour Inspection Authority and The Tax Administration. Action-oriented theories of crime and disorder The thesis discusses how the use of criminal intelligence and interagency partnership methods bolster particular action-oriented interpretations of crime and disorder, i.e. forms of knowledge that are not produced for knowledge’s own sake, but to manage agencies’ primary obligations. This is articulated in the thesis’ eponymous term practical criminologies. Control agencies’ theories of crime and crime control are related to agencies’ need to make crime problems actionable. The implications of knowledge as practical criminologies stands in tension with loadbearing assumptions about, inter alia, the possibility of data-driven and objective decision-making through either traditional intelligence systems or supported by software based on artificial intelligence.