Faith in Policing: The Co-production of Crime Control in Britain

Abstract

Involving faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the production of crime control has been seen as a way of increasing efficiency, promoting accountability, and improving trust and confidence in policing. In this article, which draws on qualitative research, we consider how police officers understand the role of faith in policing, engage with faith communities, and work with FBOs to mobilise crime prevention activities. We demonstrate that any effective co-production of crime control that involves faith communities and FBOs requires police officers to negotiate a number of complex and multi-faceted issues. We argue that the coproduction of crime control has symbolic, moral, and technical qualities which all need to be successfully negotiated to achieve its aims.

Police engagement with Muslim communities: breaking out, breaking in, and breaking through

“…Since personal religiosity has been shown to influence day-to-day police practice (see Prideaux and McFadyen, 2013) we consider this issue, where relevant, when discussing our findings (see also: Bullock and Johnson, 2016). Moreover, whilst the issue of counterterrorism was not a specific focus of the interviews -because the primary aim of the research was to consider the relevance of religious faith to policing more broadly -participants did identify counter-terrorism policing as an influence on their engagement with some, predominantly Muslim, faith-based organizations and, accordingly, we consider this in our analysis.…”