- Country
- Netherlands
- Target Audience
- Online community
- Youth/pupils/students
- First responders or practitioners
- key themes association
- (Early) prevention
- Internet and radicalisation
- Year
- 2021
Project description
Gaming with the police’ is a practice developed by the Dutch community police to keep in touch with youth who are active in the digital domain. By entering their ‘comfort zone’ through gaming, police officers from the community connect with the youth and earn their trust.
This gives the police the ability (either during the gaming or in one-on-one interaction) to speak with the youth, help them with different problems they might experience, inform them and do a lot of preventive work. Engaging with youth through video games lowers the boundaries that youth feel regarding talking to the police and constitutes a unique means of trust building.
The police are in contact with the youth in their neighbourhoods. The police are present in the youth’s comfort zone, on the gaming platform. Respective police officers create accounts on popular gaming and streaming platforms (e.g. Twitch and Steam) and get in touch with youth, while gaming.
Because of this, police officers know what is going on with the youth in different communities and can prevent a range of different problems in an early stage. Contact is accessible. The police help the youth with questions they have or refer them to someone who can help them. The youth share information with the police about what is happening in the neighbourhoods.
