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Trial lecture - time and place
Adjudication committee
- Professor em. Liv Finstad, University of Oslo (leder)
- Professor dr. Cecilia Löfstrand, University of Gothenburg (first opponent)
- Assosiate professor dr. Ronald van Steden, Vrije Universitet, Amsterdam (second opponent)
Chair of defence
- Head of Department Helene Oppen Ingebrigtsen Gundhus
Supervisors
- Professor Heidi Mork Lomell
- Forsker Martin Nøkleberg
Summary
The topic of this dissertation is nocturnal policing – the efforts various policing actors undergo to ensure, maintain, and restore order in the field-specific setting of nightlife environments.
The nightlife and its controllers
The nightlife serves as an arena where a broad spectrum of activities unfold. It showcases cultural and vibrant social life, reflects dynamic urban transformations, reveals the influence of various markets and the many agencies striving to regulate these spaces. Together, these components comprise significant features of nocturnal environments – a social space associated with party-going and alcohol consumption.
The nightlife additionally poses criminologically interesting questions regarding disorder, crime, and unsafety. As the high density of nightlife establishments correlates with statistical clusters of crime – the nightlife is also associated with incidents of violence, nuisance, and disorder. In mitigating and managing such ‘unwanted actions’, several formal bodies frequent nightlife areas. Following this, this project delves into the practices of three organisations that strive to ensure order and amplify public safety in these spaces: the police, private security guards, and the Night Ravens.
Public, private, and voluntary policing
Building on the concept of policing as the provision of law-, norm-, and order enforcement conducted by a plurality of organisations, this dissertation offers a comparative analysis of public, private, and voluntary order maintenance work in Norwegian nightlife environments. Representatives from the public police’s patrolling units, private security companies, and the voluntary organisation ‘the Night Ravens’ are the subjects of the study, given their essential function in ensuring safety, security, and order in the nightlife environments of Oslo.
By comparatively addressing public, private, and voluntary policing respectively, the dissertation highlights similarities and differences between order maintenance work across different sectors. This is explored through four articles, which examine the organisations’ notions of productivity, their roles and power positions, as well as the environment they operate within.
Policing actors’ roles
Promoting order and managing disorder in the nightlife setting denote complex processes, comprising diverse efforts employed to ensure, maintain, and restore a form of social order in line with policing organisations’ perceptions of “right” and “wrong”. While organisational mandates play a key function in shaping the narratives of how policing agencies are supposed to conduct their work, the findings of this project draw attention to how such overarching structures contradict with the situations they encounter. The project brings insight on the situationally conditioned logics underpinning policing organisations’ work, tensions regarding their roles and functions, and how ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ are managed by formalised bodies of control.
Nocturnal policing
In emphasising the significance of the night, the dissertation advocates for the term ‘nocturnal policing’ to capture how notions of ‘order’ change through the 24-hour cycle. The findings of this study point to the notion of the nightlife as a particular arena for policing – where potentially distinct, implicit forms of power emerge, characterised by constant and consistent dualities regarding the role of actors participating in law, norm, and order enforcement. As exemplified through the exploration of public, private, and voluntary agencies, convergences of policing practices develop accordingly in parallel with the darkness, intoxication environments, and the nuisance of the night.