Policing Gang Desistance: Challenges and Opportunities

Police-led desistance programs have become established as a pivotal political strategy in Sweden.

Within policing research, however, few studies have examined how the police can facilitate pathways to desistance for offenders.

Similarly, desistance research has paid little attention to policing and how the police might assist offenders’ desistance transitions.

This study brings together the two fields of policing and desistance research to analyze police-led gang desistance programs.

By applying a nodal governance perspective on policing, and the perspective of assisted desistance, the study will explore the foundations and operationalization of police-led gang desistance programs.

By means of qualitative interviews and micro-ethnography, the project aims to explore on the one hand how gang desistance is understood, facilitated or counteracted by the police and practitioners, and on the other how gang desistance is perceived and experienced by gang members who participate, or have participated, in such programs.

The three-year research project will be headed by Assoc. Prof. Anita Heber and Dr. Anders Stenström who will be supported by an advisory board of researchers and practitioners.

The project will produce new insights for practitioners into potential pitfalls and best practice with regard to policing desistance, and will develop a theoretical understanding of what these programs can tell us about the potentials of desistance policing in contemporary society.