Police as a partner of chidren’s homes? The professional shaping of the relationship between children’s homes and the police as a horizon of young people's experience

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Zoe Clark; Professor Dr. Tilman Lutz
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 529484681

In the practice of residential care for young people, numerous occasions for different interactions or close cooperation between the police and the (semi-independent) organisations of children's homes occur, which are potentially consequential for young people, but have not yet been investigated. In this respect, the extent and nature of the contact between children's homes and the police, as well as the experiences, interpretations, and ways of coping with the situation of young people, are the central objects of this project. Divergent forms of contact between home education and the police are relevant mainly because they frame heterogeneous experiences of young people, which are relevant for the development of their self- and world relations, their positioning (work), e.g. for their trust in the institutions as well as their sense of belonging. The heterogeneous forms of interaction between residential care for young people and the police, their correspondence to (pedagogical) practices in the institution (restrictiveness, punitiveness) as well as the experiences that result for young people from the respective arrangements are examined within the framework of a triangulative research design consisting of quantitative and qualitative research. Using a survey of professionals, facility types will be differentiated along the nature of police interactions (latent class analysis) and statistical relationships to levels of restrictiveness and punitiveness will be analyzed (logistic regression). A sample is targeted that includes 10% of residential care facilities (approximately 1200) and represents the landscape of organisation structures as well as possible. Qualitative research will be used to capture the experiences that emerge for young people from living in each type of organization. Young people from residential care between the ages of 14 and 21 will be interviewed about situations and experiences with the police inside and outside their institution, following the episodic interview (Flick). The sampling of the qualitative study is done in particular by the affiliation to the facility types. In order to be able to start parallel to the quantitative analysis, cases that are as heterogeneous as possible, encompassing maximum contrasts in their relevant characteristics, are first examined in accordance with the principle of maximum structural variation. The analysis of the interviews is carried out in two steps. In the first step, the analysis remains at the level of the individual interview in order to be able to examine correlations with the quantitatively generated facility types in the triangulation. In the second step, the cross-case and cross-comparison analysis is carried out, in which the phenomena, positionings and interpretations are openly analyzed and contrasted.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants