Change as the New Normal: Policing Diverse and Complex Societies
Bern, Switzerland
The 15th Pearls in Policing Conference was hosted in Bern, Switzerland, from 25 – 29 June 2022 and was organised by the Swiss Federal Office of Police and the Pearls Secretariat in The Netherlands. The theme of the conference was “Change as the New Normal: Policing Diverse and Complex Societies”.
During the Pearls Conference discussions were based on the research conducted by the members of the International Action Learning Group (IALG), inspiring interactive sessions and peer to peer consultations. The annual conference is the culmination of a year of continuous learning undertaken by the IALG. This learning group presented its findings at the start of the conference. The assignment for the 2021-2022 IALG has been formulated together with Europol and INTERPOL: Far longer than Covid-19, we have known another virus: organised crime. Without appropriate countermeasures, it spreads rapidly, sometimes unnoticeably, it constantly develops new variants to establish itself in our everyday lives, and it takes no notice of national boundaries. As with a virus, when ‘treating’ crime we need to first understand its root causes. We know there are many factors ranging from cultural, political to socio-economical which individually and collectively create and breed crime. Organised crime can only be fought with prevention, cooperation and repression measures and here, the police is a key player. In this assignment, we asked how society, economy and institutions can better detect, prevent and prosecute the infiltration of organized crime and its concomitants – corruption and money laundering – in domestic and international legal structures and what role the police should play.