Establishing Trust Despite the Risk? An Analysis of the Need for Trust in Police Cooperation

Abstract

While ‘more police cooperation’ has long been the European Union (EU) policy-makers’ mantra, the new buzzword today seems to be ‘trust’. Trust is seen by the European Commission as one of three key elements – the others being ‘tools’ and ‘training’ – in European police cooperation, and as a commodity that can be ‘built’ and ‘promoted’. Another illustration of the emphasis laid on trust can be found in the police cooperation programme under the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, in which building trust among the police forces of the EU and Eastern Partnership countries is a primary aim. Furthermore, in policies of the Council of the EU on police cooperation ‘trust’ is now a recurrent concept. However, none of these EU policy documents offer an explanation on what is actually understood to be ‘trust’ and how and why this is an apparently important element in police cooperation. Generally it is also not specified who should be trusting who, and why.Also, in the literature on police cooperation trust is frequently mentioned as a requisite for police cooperation and a lack of trust is generally attributed to different backgrounds of police officers, or malpractice such as (a perception of) corruption. However, a more in-depth analysis of the concept of trust in relation to police cooperation and how the mechanisms of (dis)trust in police cooperation actually work, so far has not been published. With some exceptions the concept of ‘trust’ is generally taken for granted. This is a bit unfortunate as there is a wealth of sociological literature on trust, for example from Coleman, Luhman and Sztompka who each provide a theoretical perspective that may serve to advance our understanding of the aspect of trust in police cooperation.Against a background of these sociological perspectives on trust, as well as practical police cooperation practices, this paper analyses the need for trust in police cooperation. The key question this chapter aims to answer is why trust is needed to establish police cooperation. To that end, the next section first presents theoretical perspectives on trust, using mainly the work of Coleman, Luhman and Sztompka, illustrated with practical examples from police cooperation situations. It will arrive at a definition of trust and will above all consider the intimate relation between trust and risk. Section three thereafter examines the risks in police cooperation and introduces six categories of concrete situations that may lead to a breach of trust, which could derail cooperation between police. The penultimate section is dedicated to the strategies that police use to mitigate the risks in cooperation and will map these strategies to the theories as discussed in section two. The final section brings the different insights uncovered throughout this chapter together.