Walk the line. Police-youth relations in a post-pandemic era

• In Event: POL Panel 22. Trust, legitimacy and vulnerability: Exploring law enforcement practices and their impact

Abstract

For many reasons, public space exerts a special attraction on young people. Related to that, we see that the regulation and control of (behavior of) young people in public space is an important focus for local communities and their police forces. New forms of regulation and ‘politics of behavior’ tend to organize social life in the public domain on the basis of normative definitions of public space and what is there to be considered as (un)desirable behavior. Young people do not always fit that frame and use the public domain in a different way, which regularly results in a confrontation with these norms and regulations, and potential negative contacts between youth and local police. The Covid-19 pandemic and related measures put in place in public space added to these adversarial police contacts for a large number of young people.
In this paper, I depart from the above observations and the importance of procedural justice in establishing police-youth relations. Based on the Belgian Safety Monitor and European Social Survey data in Belgium, I look at perceptions of young people and police-youth relations in pre- and post-pandemic times. There are good reasons to believe police-youth relations were further jeopardized during the pandemic, the related lockdown and prevailing covid-19 measures. The paper concludes with some reflections on these dented police youth relations in a post-pandemic era.

Author

• Stefaan Pleysier, LINC, KU Leuven