Policing and Policy Choices: Stigmatizing Militarization or Strengthening Social Capital?

Johan Leman, 20 October 2026

In other words, should policing be supplemented by a more militarized approach, or should we instead strive for better cooperation with schools and community organizations?

For many boys in working-class neighbourhoods, public life is dominated by street culture. Add to this a mismatch between education and the labour market, and you create a breeding ground for frustration.

These same boys appropriate parts of public space as their own. Anyone entering their space is expected to be friendly and, preferably, someone they recognize and can place within their social environment. People in uniform do not meet these criteria. That is part of the problem. Can this be solved by deploying more military personnel? Clearly not.

Official society—the society represented by uniforms—is perceived as stigmatizing. The uniform and the person wearing it are the most visible embodiment of the institution that stigmatizes! Moreover, certain informal power structures within neighbourhoods have an interest in ensuring that this perception does not change.

Anyone genuinely concerned about the well-being of society should ask how the “uniform”—whether worn by the police or by other official service providers—can become an integrated and integrating part of a neighbourhood or community, without lowering standards or weakening the enforcement of rules. If the price of achieving this is laxity, that is a troubling development. Meanwhile, a degree of increasing internationalization and a rise in drug dealing in neighbourhoods have added to the challenges, making matters no easier.

Let us reflect on this. As a society, will we allow militarization to deepen stigmatization, both within and beyond the neighbourhoods concerned, in order to maintain order? Or will we invest in the people and institutions that foster integration within neighbourhoods—schools and community associations—which help reduce stigmatization, provided, of course, that they make a genuine and concrete commitment to doing so?

This is the policy choice that must be made.

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