Citation

Rostami A, Melde C, Holgersson S. Int. J. Comp. Appl. Crim. Justice 2015; 39(3): 199-217.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis)

DOI

10.1080/01924036.2014.973054

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Street gangs and organized crime groups pose a unique challenge to police departments across the globe. Given their penchant for public displays of affiliation through well-recognized signs and symbols, their presence is often associated with media attention and public scrutiny, which threatens the legitimacy of the police and creates added pressure to generate a specific and public response to the threat these groups pose. The current study documents how the Stockholm County, Sweden, police developed and maintained an anti-gang operation in response to an emerging gang problem. While police officials labeled the anti-gang initiative a success in the news media, analyses of prosecution statistics and internal police documents demonstrate a less than ideal effect of this operation. Potential reasons for the discrepancy in public pronouncements of programmatic success relative to evaluation of official data are discussed.

Language: en