Balancing strategies of citizenship rights and socialsecurity in the police executive criminal policy

Nowadays, exercising citizenship rights has become a popular discourse in all countries, including Iran; but, due to its direct connection with the interests of the government, this fundamental concept has often had a conflicting relationship with the executive processes of providing social security; and causes challenges for the sovereignty institutions, especially the police, as the main guardian of societal security. The present research is aimed at finding solutions and guidelines for balancing “citizenship rights” and “societal security” in police criminal policy. 

Having a strategic nature, and using semi-structured interviews the present research has managed to analyze the obtained data. The elite society includes faculty members of the law department of Amin University of Law Sciences, managers and senior experts of the “Faraja” society active in law and security, and those who were fully acquainted with the research topic. In this field, the researchers used the snowball method and after conducting semi-structured interviews with 30 experts, they achieved theoretical saturation, then the data analysis was done using the qualitative content analysis method.

In the present research, the researchers addressed conflicting examples, and police challenges to resolve these conflicts, and suggested solutions to create a balance between “citizenship rights” and “societal security”.

To establish a balance between the two above-mentioned concepts, the police need to use strategies such as “playing a role in the country’s policies”, “trust building”, “public education and information”, “specialized training of officers and empowering employees”, “fair intelligence” and “dignity institutionalization” in the development of its executive criminal policy.