Contested Professional Collaboration: Social Work, Policing, and Legitimacy In Marginalized Communities

Background and Purpose: Community violence (CV) represents a critical challenge at the intersection of social work and criminal justice, particularly in marginalized and conflict-affected contexts. In Palestinian-Arab society in Israel, rising levels of violence are shaped by structural inequality, socio-political marginalization, and contested relationships with state institutions, including the police. Within this context, social workers operate on the front lines of violence response, positioned between community needs and criminal justice systems. A central yet understudied dimension of this work is professional collaboration with the police, an institution that is simultaneously necessary for public safety and perceived as lacking legitimacy within the community.

This study examines how frontline social workers experience and navigate profissional collaboration with the police in addressing CV. By situating social workers’ experiences within broader dynamics of policing, legitimacy, and racialized inequality, the study contributes to scholarship at the intersection of criminal justice and social work, while foregrounding the perspectives of practitioners working within marginalized minority communities.

Methods: Using a qualitative phenomenological design, the study draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 Arab social workers employed in local social service departments in Palestinian-Arab communities in Israel. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), allowing for a rigorous and context-sensitive examination of participants’ lived experiences, professional dilemmas, and decision-making in relation to law enforcement engagement.

Results: The findings reveal three interconnected themes. First, collaboration with the police is experienced as complex, situational, and contingent, ranging from effective engagement to hesitant, conditional, and risk-aware involvement. Second, social workers engage with the police primarily out of procedural and professional obligation, despite questioning the effectiveness of police responses and their limited attention to the structural roots of violence. This reflects a form of constrained professionalism within systems characterized by unequal power relations and differential enforcement. Third, police intervention is perceived as selective and uneven, with delayed responses and limited protection in Arab communities, reinforcing mistrust and perceptions of unequal policing and state accountability.

Conclusions and Implications: Taken together, these findings highlight how social work–police collaboration operates within broader criminal justice dynamics marked by contested legitimacy and racialized inequality. Social workers’ practices reflect ongoing efforts to navigate these tensions, balancing professional responsibilities, client safety, and community trust within structurally constrained environments.

This study advances research at the intersection of criminal justice and social work by demonstrating how institutional legitimacy, enforcement practices, and inequality shape frontline professional decision-making. Implications underscore the need for more equitable, culturally responsive, and accountable models of collaboration between social work and policing systems, as well as for strengthening community-based responses to violence that promote trust and justice.