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The aim of this study was to investigate youths and elderly’s experiences of safety guards based on sociodemographic factors, as well as to understand what significance social capital have for the experience of safety guards. The study was formed out via a request from Sölvesborgs commune regarding the new law “Lagen (2023:196) om kommuners ansvar för brottsförebyggande arbete”. Previous research has studied how different types of capable safety guards contribute to reduced crimes, as well as factors in youths and elderly’s concerns about being exposed to crime, but rarely examines the residents’ experiences of the safety guards’ work role. This study has therefore analyzed this in order to fill a knowledge gap and increase the knowhow for the commune’s crime prevention work. In order to study how youths and elderly’s perception and experiences of safety guards look like, 13 participants who had come into contact with safety guards were interviewed and divided into four focus groups, where two of the focus groups consisted of young people and the remaining focus groups consisted of elderly living in Sölvesborg commune. The theoretical framework from which the study was based on, was Putnam and Sampson ́s two perspectives on social capital and its characteristics. The characteristics used in the analysis were shared norms, trust, social networks, socialization and collective ability. The result from the analysis showed that the residents’ perception and experiences of safety guards differ and depend on the degree of social capital cornerstones rather than sociodemographic factors. The older participants perceived the safety guards as an extended arm of the police and experienced them as protective, which could be due to the fact that the elderly and the security guards formed a social network and trust in each other that contributed to this perception. The results from the focus groups also illustrated that youths created a friendly relationship with the safety guards, which contributed to them having a trusting view of the guards. This is because the youths formed common norms towards the safety guards that developed trust and a social network between them and the guards. |
