The not-so-hidden partisan politics of community policing: Community police meetings in Buenos Aires, Argentina

IF 1.9 2区社会学 Q2 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Theoretical Criminology Pub Date : 2022-06-05 DOI:10.1177/13624806221103848

L. MacColman, Violeta Dikenstein

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Community policing promises to foster collaboration between police and citizens, strengthen social cohesion, and address the root causes of crime and disorder. In order to understand why it often fails to achieve this, we argue that scholars should recognize community–police meetings as sites of dynamic, multi-scalar political contestation and pay closer attention to the not-so-hidden partisan struggles that shape them. Our empirical analysis focuses on Buenos Aires, Argentina. Based on ethnographic observation of 30 community–police meetings and interviews with 50 politicians, police officers, activists, and everyday citizens, we explain how higher-order partisan contests influenced the dynamics and outcomes of local meetings. We show how these meetings exacerbated social schisms, reified ideological differences between competing parties, and galvanized support for the City Government’s “law and order” policies. Our results suggest that local participation sometimes reinforces the punitive approaches to urban problems that community policing originally aimed to transcend.

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社区警务中不那么隐蔽的党派政治:阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯的社区警察会议

社区警务承诺促进警察和公民之间的合作，加强社会凝聚力，并解决犯罪和混乱的根源。为了理解为什么它经常无法实现这一点，我们认为学者们应该认识到社区警察会议是动态的、多尺度的政治争论的场所，并更加关注塑造它们的不那么隐蔽的党派斗争。我们的实证分析集中在阿根廷的布宜诺斯艾利斯。基于对30次社区警察会议的民族志观察，以及对50名政治家、警察、活动家和普通公民的采访，我们解释了更高级别的党派竞争如何影响地方会议的动态和结果。我们展示了这些会议如何加剧社会分裂，具体化了竞争政党之间的意识形态差异，并激发了对市政府“法律与秩序”政策的支持。我们的研究结果表明，地方参与有时会强化社区警务最初旨在超越的对城市问题的惩罚方法。

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来源期刊

Theoretical Criminology CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY-

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

9.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Consistently ranked in the top 12 of its category in the Thomson Scientific Journal Citation Reports, Theoretical Criminology is a major interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed journal for the advancement of the theoretical aspects of criminological knowledge. Theoretical Criminology is concerned with theories, concepts, narratives and myths of crime, criminal behaviour, social deviance, criminal law, morality, justice, social regulation and governance. The journal is committed to renewing general theoretical debate, exploring the interrelation of theory and data in empirical research and advancing the links between criminological analysis and general social, political and cultural theory.