Effective community-police communication and the prevention of criminality

Session

Law

Description

Community policing is a relatively new concept in Western Balkan countries despite the communist heritage of secret informative services that use to have detailed information about almost everyone’s life. This heritage has probably an impact to the mentality of communities, expressed into their communicative approaches towards police and criminal elements. This paper tends to explore the communication process between the communities, police forces and victims in North Macedonia and Albania. The objective is to understand the challenges and the causes of failures of the flow of this communication which is far of being effective, even nowadays. In this paper we use quantitative data collected by the police authorities of both countries and qualitative data collected by both national news media. We use framing theory for building our model of analyses as well as for the interpretation of the results. The methodology used is mixture of normative research methods and media communication research methods. Discourse analyses is used to collect the data. The time frame under analyses is the first part of the year 2022. The results of the research conducted prior to this paper show that it exists a deep communication gap between local communities and the police both in North Macedonia and in Albania which is a major reason for the non-prevention of criminality. The reasons are multiple, some of them are similar in both countries but some of them are totally different. The legal framework for the community policing is quite similar to those of other developed countries, but the implementation is quite different. The news media plays its part in this flow of communication. This paper concludes with some recommendations on how to improve this communication in better using the advantages that both countries offer.

Keywords:

community policing, criminality, communication, media.

Proceedings Editor

Edmond Hajrizi

ISBN

978-9951-550-50-5

Location

UBT Kampus, Lipjan

Start Date

29-10-2022 12:00 AM

End Date

30-10-2022 12:00 AM

DOI

10.33107/ubt-ic.2022.245

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Oct 29th, 12:00 AM Oct 30th, 12:00 AM

Effective community-police communication and the prevention of criminality

UBT Kampus, Lipjan

Community policing is a relatively new concept in Western Balkan countries despite the communist heritage of secret informative services that use to have detailed information about almost everyone’s life. This heritage has probably an impact to the mentality of communities, expressed into their communicative approaches towards police and criminal elements. This paper tends to explore the communication process between the communities, police forces and victims in North Macedonia and Albania. The objective is to understand the challenges and the causes of failures of the flow of this communication which is far of being effective, even nowadays. In this paper we use quantitative data collected by the police authorities of both countries and qualitative data collected by both national news media. We use framing theory for building our model of analyses as well as for the interpretation of the results. The methodology used is mixture of normative research methods and media communication research methods. Discourse analyses is used to collect the data. The time frame under analyses is the first part of the year 2022. The results of the research conducted prior to this paper show that it exists a deep communication gap between local communities and the police both in North Macedonia and in Albania which is a major reason for the non-prevention of criminality. The reasons are multiple, some of them are similar in both countries but some of them are totally different. The legal framework for the community policing is quite similar to those of other developed countries, but the implementation is quite different. The news media plays its part in this flow of communication. This paper concludes with some recommendations on how to improve this communication in better using the advantages that both countries offer.