Making sense in proactive police work
Year: 2008
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Swedish police has changed from a mainly reactive approach to a more proactive. Information technology has been developed to aid police in strategic decision making. However, IT have not yet been applied in an operational police practice to increase the ability of the police officers possibility to make sense of situations they are confronted with. The purpose of this paper is first to investigate how sensemaking theory can conceptualise and describe the characteristics of police practice, secondly to contribute with knowledge of how police officers make sense in proactive police work. The paper is based on a four-year period of studying operational police practice. Four candidate categories of police officers sensemaking have been identified: 1. Action, without action no sensemaking occurs. 2. Information, police officers search and retrieve information to gain knowledge. 3. Experience, the police officers experience together with their retrieved information help the officers to make sense of situations. 4. Collaboration, in collaboration with colleagues’, police officers together try to make sense of different situations. Sensemaking theory have based upon collected empirical data indicated to be an applicable theory to describe the variations and complexity in police practice.
Authors: Erik Borglund, Urban Nuldén
Institution: Mid Sweden University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1538965729