Protecting the vulnerable through neighbourhood policing

Collaborating with South Yorkshire Police, this project will explore the recent reconfiguration of 'neighbourhood policing' through a discourse of 'vulnerability'. Looking at the extent to and the ways in which the emergence of 'vulnerability' as a core policing priority, it will explore how 'demand' for policing is understood, responded to, and managed at the local, neighbourhood level. It will question whether the institutionalisation of 'vulnerability' refocuses policing priorities and protection onto erstwhile stigmatised populations and marginalised groups, traditionally seen as problematic due to their interactions with authorities, lifestyles or circumstances, and the extent to which it potentially shifts the delivery of policing towards an emphasis on proactive prevention and harm minimisation from a public health perspective. Observations, interviews, focus groups and administrative data will all be collected.
The project will address the following research questions:
- How is vulnerability conceived and operationalised in neighbourhood policing practices? In what ways does it refigure the role of 'threat, harm and risk' in steering police activity?
- In what ways does the vulnerability agenda within neighbourhood policing refocus policing priorities and protection onto erstwhile stigmatised populations and marginalised groups, traditionally seen as problematic, 'deviant' or 'a risk' due to their interactions with authorities, lifestyles or circumstances?
- In what ways does the vulnerability agenda within neighbourhood policing shift the emphasis to prevention and harm minimisation, as contrasted with a focus on law enforcement, investigation and prosecution?