Can dialogue help police officers and young Black adults understand each other? Key findings from a restorative process

ABSTRACT

Relationships between the police and minority ethnic communities are often characterised by tension, mistrust and a lack of understanding. It seems unlikely that the solutions lie in traditional approaches to police-community engagement. This article outlines the key findings from the first study to use restorative practices to facilitate dialogue between police officers and young Black adults in Europe. This occurred in a part of West Dublin, Ireland, where the police recently shot and killed a Black man. Observational and interview data suggest that the process enabled participants to speak and listen respectfully to each other and to understand how each other’s experiences shaped their perspectives on policing. These data suggest that restorative practices are a viable method for enabling dialogue that can play an educational role and provide a space safely to discuss and reflect upon views and experiences of belonging, policing and police-community relations. While there is sufficient evidence to justify seeking to scale-up dialogic processes, it remains unclear whether and how the contribution that dialogue can make at the individual and local level could translate into cultural change at the institutional level, or address underlying structural inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Police-community relations
• Dialogue
• Restorative practices
• An Garda Síochána
• Policing
• Institutional racism

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the substantial effort from all project partners and participants in making this happen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from the Irish Research Council (New Foundations).