UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 08 JULY 2016
Muslim parents view the police with caution, a lack of trust and wouldn’t speak out if their children travelled to Syria, according to new research published by Birmingham City University and the University of Birmingham.
Researchers Dr Imran Awan and Dr Surinder Guru conducted focus groups with Muslim parents in Birmingham, exploring how they view the current counter-terrorism policing strategy employed by West Midlands Police in relation to the crisis in Syria.
“The data from the research study has found that Muslim community members are increasingly finding the partnership with the police service problematic”, said Dr Awan, Associate Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University.
The study established that many parents also found it difficult handling personal moral dilemmas which could see them alienating their own children by giving the police information about them.
Participant comments included: “I don’t trust the police so I would not tell them”; “I would not call them because the police might just come knocking on my door and arrest my other children”; and “I would not report them to the police, because that’s not what parents do. We need to educate them not to travel there in the first place. If I told the police they would then arrest me and my children.”
Participant responses also indicated influence by levels of historical mistrust between Muslim communities and the police.
“The central contradiction appears to be that parents are implicitly held to be responsible for the actions of their children by the police, yet the parents are adamant that the responsibility is not theirs and that they are relatively powerless”, said Dr Guru, Lecturer in Social Work at University of Birmingham.
“In circumstances where the community lacks trust and confidence in the police, community policing is likely to be ineffective because it is viewed with suspicion.”