Crime-prevention: an investigation of crime prevention as a practice of making worries and judgments

In Denmark, crime prevention is embedded in state professional practices in kindergartens, schools and youth clubs. These welfare institutions are conceived as safe places that safeguard children and young people through inclusive learning environments, warm and empathic relationships between students/teachers, student/student and through experiences with diversity. Yet, critical educational research challenges the idea of welfare institutions as a protective factor by demonstrating how institutional practice produces social and cultural categorizations marking what are legitimate and illegitimate behaviors.
This project explores how state professionals such as teachers, pedagogues, social workers and police officers produce understandings of crime prone young people and their conduct and behavior in a cross-professional meeting. These state professionals are organized in a cross-sectional cooperation called “SSP”. SSP is a locally anchored cooperation of the school (S), the social services (S) and the police (P) and its aim is to create a coordinated system of prevention, e.g., to prevent crime or school drop outs. In continuation of this, crime preventive work is understood as a practice of worry-making and judgment-making.
The project is based on observations of meetings held within the framework of the SSP in two different Danish municipalities and on interviews with the involved welfare professionals.