This study examines interviews, in which police officers talk about their encounters with children at school, in public places, and during police interrogations, domestic violence calls and while being caught. The aim of this study is to provide information for combining two different sets of obligations in police work, namely moral obligations codified in written law and responsibilities based on the children’s life situations. This study provides information on what the encounters between police officers and children are like, and how police officers act in work situations involving children. In addition, this study describes the kinds of elements of moral order the police officers tie to childhood. In work situations that involve children police officers assess childhood: whether and how normal, deviant, right or wrong it is. In addition to tasks and working methods defined by law, these assessments have an impact on the ways the police officers react to the children’s situations.
Controlling, securing and crime investigation do not alone define police officers’ work with children. This work also includes care, accountability, taking into account the children’s subject positions, examining situations and guiding children. In particular, solutions made during individual encounters are based on paying attention to the clients’ bearing and narration, the available resources, the personnel culture of the police, their possibilities in relying on other professions, as well as the police officers’ personal experiences and norms. The moral order concerning the situation depends on what aspects of the above listed elements the police officers primarily rely on. In addition, moral order is affected by the underlying societal ethos and conceptions of children, as well as political and administrative ideologies, which function as the source and force aiming at changing police work on societal level. The data for this study consists of thematic interviews collected from 40 police officers during the fall of 2004. The informants are constables working as patrol officers or detectives, 5 of them women and 35 men. The transcribed interviews have been coded by applying grounded theory. Methodologically this study follows the principles of adaptive theory. As a result, moral order emerged as the significant, key factor unifying all the interviews in the coded the data. This study provided concrete information on police work with children and the processes of collaboration between the police and social welfare, which we so far have had scarce social scientific knowledge on. In addition, this study highlights the significance of the moral in the Finnish police, so far examined mostly from the points of view of justice, administration and police culture.
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