Bad Cop, Good Cop, Silly Cop: Typifications of the Police in Nordic Street Culture

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Publication Details

Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Published
2026-09-18
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624x261489222
Primary Topic
Policing Practices and Perceptions
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Bad Cop, Good Cop, Silly Cop: Typifications of the Police in Nordic Street Culture

Anna Hedlund, Sébastien Tutenges, David Wästerfors
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Policing Practices and Perceptions
article

Bad Cop, Good Cop, Silly Cop: Typifications of the Police in Nordic Street Culture

Anna Hedlund, Sébastien Tutenges, David Wästerfors
article en

Abstract

Considerable attention has been devoted to how police officers categorize the individuals they are tasked with monitoring and controlling, particularly in marginalized, crime-affected urban areas with high proportions of ethnic minority residents. This article reverses the analytical gaze by exploring typifications of the police among young people in such areas. Drawing on interview data from three research projects conducted in Sweden and Norway, we examine how young people describe and dramatize police encounters from a street culture perspective. We identify three recurring typifications of police officers-"bad," "good," and "silly"-and analyze how these types are narratively contextualized and used. Participants in these studies used subtle, evaluative distinctions, thereby performing nuanced cop-critical or cop-debunking portraits. The figure of the "silly cop"-often conveyed through humor or sarcasm-is particularly salient because it symbolically undermines police authority by portraying officers as lacking local knowledge, while simultaneously asserting the narrator's superior street cultural competence.

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
Lund University (SE), Aarhus University (DK), University of Gothenburg (SE)
Reduced inequalities
Openalex Percentile: Top 3%
Policing Practices and Perceptions
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