Police partnership working: issues and management solutions

Criminology

In a modern society, police have important roles play in preventing and managing crimes. The police are in good position to learn and investigate crimes and threats because they have available resources to ensure that communities are protected from vulnerable targets. However, changes and multi-dynamic complexities within a given society have necessitated police force to develop partnership relationships with various public agencies to enhance prevention of crimes and security matters within a society. (Clarke and Newman, 2007). Partnership working or partnership approach is largely based on the premises that only police force could not deal with the crime and complex safety problems within a community. Partnership working is defined as the cooperative relationships between two or more organizations with the aim to achieve common goals such as tackling the crime problems in a society. Partnership working with the goal to tackle crimes is now strongly embedded in the methods the local governments in the United States and United Kingdom use to enhance community safety. Organizations such as police forces, police authorities, fire services, health trusts and local governments or local councils have realized that partnership working is the effective tools to combat crimes in their respective communities. (Berry, Briggs, Erol et al. 2011).

There are number of issues leading to partnership working. In many cases, there are legal duties that oblige agencies to work together. On the other hand, agencies within local communities engage in partnership working because it is the most effective and efficient way to tackle crimes and address community problems. Jacobs (2010) argues that partnerships association between police and other agencies are the tools to tackle complex problems in the society, which include anti-social behavior induced by the alcohol and drug use. Typically, partnership working is geared to decline complex and social problems within a society.

Despite the importance of partnership working in addressing the crime problems and achieve community goals, there are still no yet comprehensive research studies on partnership working. Typically, there is a paucity of studies that synthesis the research evidence on partnership working in a way that would be available for policy makers and practitioners to implement changes in the society. This study attempts to fill this gap by providing a systematic research on partnership working. To achieve the research objective, the study sought to address the following research question.

Research Question

What issues does partnership-working present for police managers, and how might these be overcome?

The paper is structured in the following format to answer the research question. First, the study discusses the theoretical framework surrounding the partnership working. Moreover, the study investigates the issues that partnership working presents for police managers. Finally, the paper provides the strategies police managers could employ to overcome the issues.

To address the research question, the paper reviews the theoretical framework surrounding the partnership working.

Theory of Partnership Working

Theory of partnership working is based on the perspective that there is a need for multi-agency models to reduce crimes in a given society. Developing a joint approach has been an effective strategy to deliver a sustainable and lasting method to achieve a community improvement. Various partnership working brought about by the governments are to focus on crime reduction as well as addressing the anti-social behaviors in a community. (Home Office, 2007).

The U.S. theoretical perspective to forming multi-agency model to enhance crime reduction identifies frameworks, which underlies the effective police partnership approach:

Drug and crime problems are becoming more complex and require innovative comprehensive and complex solutions;

Partnerships are more appropriate and better to define and identify greatest community problems and concern;

Partnerships are better than a single agency to develop a target and creative interventions to control and prevent crimes because they bring together different and diverse approaches;

Multiple interventions to crime control are more effective than interventions of single agency because partnerships are more likely to undertake greater numbers of crime preventions;

Multiple interventions are likely yield greater benefits than single agency. (Rosenbaum, 2002, Berry, et al. 2011).

Using the theoretical framework, the paper addresses the issues that partnership-working present for police managers.

Issues that Partnership Working Present for Police Managers

In the contemporary police practice, the roles of a police manager are to design and formulate goals to meet the needs and expectation of stakeholders such as employees and members of the community. Stakeholders who may also be affected by the roles of police force are various groups and individuals, which include correctional agencies, private police, business and industry, political leaders, and other governmental agencies. More importantly, the role of police managers is to formulate policy to achieve community expectations and part of the strategies to achieve community expectations is through partnership working. Although, there are benefits that police force could enjoy from partnership working, however, there are still issues that partnership working presents to police managers and some of these issues are discussed below:

Mechanisms to Achieve Better Partnership Working

One of the pressing issues that could face a police manager is the strategy to implement effective partnership working to assist police force to combat crime within a given community. In the United States, many police managers understand that it is very important for police authorities and other agencies and organizations to work together in order to tackle crimes in a given society. Police managers also understand that partnership working is an effective strategy to reduce crimes and enhance community safety. However, challenges remain; police managers still face the issues of choosing the best strategy to adopt to derive the best from partnership working. After forming partnership with government agencies, public and private organizations, police manager are still facing the issues on choosing the best strategies:

To ensure that partnership working functions to an acceptable level of performances;

To enable communities to derive benefits from the partnership association formed with other agencies;

To involve local communities in shaping local priorities;

To support the development knowledge and skills across all partnership organizations;

To enhance partnership accountability in order to address crime and disorder. (Home Office, 2007).

Apart from the issues enumerated above, other challenging issues facing police manager are the strategy to achieve shared vision, norms and values among partners' organizations. Berry, et al. (2009) argues that shared values and norms are critical to the success of partner organizations. The shared values are to establish collaborative advantages among partner organizations.

More issues facing police manager is the leadership role. A strong leadership is critical for the success of partnership organizations. Effectiveness of good partnerships depends on the dedication of full -time coordinator and a strong leadership is very critical to guide partnership organizations to a strategic direction and design a problem solving approach to oversee problem.

Information Sharing Issue

Other important issues that police manager needs to consider is the issue of information sharing. A successful partnership working depends on the willingness of partner agencies to share information and data. Effectiveness of partnership working depends on the willingness of partner organization to share information among one another. However, confidentiality of information and gravity of information exchange could impede the implementation of crime reduction initiatives. For example, "Section 115 of the Crime and Disorder Act provides that persons can lawfully disclose information to relevant authorities, where this is necessitated by any of the provisions of the Act."(Phillips, Jacobson. Prime, et al. 2002 P. 22). Home Office Guidance of 1998 suggests that the best strategy to enhance effective information disclosure is to work out careful information sharing protocols among agencies involved. While the Home Office emphasizes on the disclosures of information regarding the management of crimes and disorder, however, many senior managers of partnership organizations lack confidence in Section 115 of the Crime and Disorder Act and unwilling to share information with police force. Thus, the issues lead to an effective information exchange problems. Moreover, police managers could often encounter technical difficulties with regard to information exchange because there is a general lack of information exchanges protocol among partner agencies. Sometimes, some agencies often result to opportunistic approach to collect sensitive information from other agencies.

Thus, a police manager may face challenges when deciding on the best strategy to disclose information to other agencies based on the sensitivity surrounding the data collected and repercussion of information exchange. The seminar arranged at Stanford reveals that some health representatives of some Accident and Emergency hospital departments are reluctant to disclose the information of number of patients who secure wounds with knives to police. Typically, they are reluctant to provide information such as patient's home address and the postal address to enhance patient's anonymity. Nicholas, (1999) provides similar argument by pointing out that many public agencies in the United States are not accustomed to sharing information and organizational resources with police authorities. Typically, the historical norm of some public organizations is to maintain professional distance from other organizations.

Reluctant Partners

Reluctant partners are another issue facing a police manager with reference to partnership working. Reluctant partners are the partner organizations that are unwilling to cooperate with police authorities in combating crimes and disorder within the society. Generally, health sector is generally reluctant to cooperate with police officers with the effort to combat crimes and health authorities are generally reluctant to collaborate with police force in order to combat crime and disorder within a society. Major factor leading to their reluctant acts is that health authorities generally lack effective resources to commit to the partnership process. It is also difficult to engage health authorities into partnership process with police because of the general believe that it is not their core responsibility to combat crimes within the communities. (Phillips, et al. 2002).

Unlike the UK that has a designed a legal protocol such as the Crime & Disorder Act 1998 which mandates public and private authorities to cooperate with police authorities in combating crimes, the issue is quite different in the United States. Partnership working in the United States context is quite different. .

The United States does not have the same historical footing with the UK system with regard to the partnership working. In the United States, no legal protocol obliges the private and public authorities to form partnership working with the police force. Typically, the partnership working in the United States is dominated by series of government sponsored to develop multi-agency approach to prevent and control violent crimes. Thus, police managers often face challenges to mandate agencies to divulge sensitive information to assist them to combat crime in their communities since there is no formal legal framework that supports this process. (Berry, Briggs, Erol, et al. 2011).

Home Office, (2007) supports this argument by pointing out that some agencies are reluctant to release information to police. However, effective information sharing is the cornerstone of arriving at shared solutions to issues. Effective decision-making relies on good information to assist partners to implement safety intervention in order to enhance a robust community safety. Problem solving approach could only be achieved if information among partner agencies is freely diffused. However, police managers often face challenges to collect information from key agencies because some of the partner agencies are reluctant to share both depersonalized and personalized information with police officers.

Jacobs, (2010) point partnership working could lead to a conflict of interests. Typically, police and other partnership agencies have a quite different interest, languages and rationalities and working together could lead to the conflict of interest consequently impeding the goal of partnership. The findings of the research conducted by Jacob (2010) reveal that some agencies such as housing authorities are generally reluctant to work with police authorities. For example, one of the housing officers interviewed put the following remark: "It is not housing's role to police alcohol and drug issues. If tenants have issues with alcohol and drugs, then they are encouraged to call the police." (Jacob, 2010 P. 933). Similar to housing agencies, many community organizations are also reluctant to work with police authorities. For example, community organizations such as the Community Safety Liaison Group, Salvation Army and Anglicare are not ready to work with police authority. Essentially, partnership working sometimes requires face-to-face discussion across different agencies. Many agencies believe that partnership working is additional workload. The agency's interests could also easily fade if new initiatives are frequently launched.

Mission Creep, Mission Distortion, and Organizational Lag

Murphy, et al. (2007) identify mission distortion, mission creep, and organizational lag as potential three issues that police managers could face in partnership working. Police force often faces challenges with other partnering organizations because of lack of experience to work with other agencies. Police officers generally do not have extensive experience to work with other agencies. For example, community correction agencies do not have operational guidelines to assist police officers. The issues often make police officers to rely on process of trial and errors. Mission distortion is the process where distinctions with respect to mission roles of partnership organizations become blurred. Mission distortion has been the subject of concern in the application of partnering working in the United States. Murphy et al. (2007) further argue that agencies partnering with the police often face challenges to balance their primary responsibilities with the responsibilities of law enforcement agent. The challenges have been relatively intense in the last ten years. For example, rehabilitation officers in the United States face challenges to maintain the dual roles of partnering with police forces and maintaining the rehabilitation responsibilities.

"Shared, multi-agency responsibility for community problems may have the potential to facilitate effective problem-solving, however, it may also create confusion for community corrections officers and police officers as they attempt to preserve their functional distinctions" (Murphy et al. 2007 P. 136).

Typically, formal partnering could assist police officers to expand their roles; however, partnering could allow partnering participants to engage in inappropriate activities.

Potential Abuse of Authority

Potential abuse of authority is another issue that a police manager needs to consider in the partnership working. One of the side effects of partnership working is that it is likely for some police officers to abuse their authorities. The intra-agency partnership placed in the neighborhood setting is likely to be far from organization control thereby leading to the abuse of power. Typically, neighborhood police officers are likely to believe that they are far from watching eye of their superior and believe that their actions are likely to go uncheck.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2009) summarizes other issues that police managers could face with regard to partnership working and the issues are as follows:

Failure to inspire and limited vision

Other partners intending to dominate, manipulate other partners

Inconsistence level of understanding and lack of clear purpose

Lack of understanding of the roles and responsibilities of other partners

Different philosophy of partners organizations

Too little time to implement effective consultation

Hidden agendas among partners

The study provides the strategies that police managers could employ to overcome the challenges of partnership working based on the findings of different challenges that police authorities are likely to face.

Strategies to Overcome the Issues facing Police Managers

This paper provides the following suggestions to overcome the challenging issues facing police managers:

Empowering effective strategic leadership;

Engaging communities with the partnership working

Implementing constructive and visible accountability

Sharing of data and information among partners

Strategic leadership is vital to the success of an organization. Strategic leadership is more crucial when different organizations work together. More importantly, robust performance management and accountability are the important foundation for effective partnership organization, and this is very essential to enhance community safety. With regard to partnership association within the community, a police manager should choose a leader who would tackle community-challenging issues.

"A chosen leader should be able to develop a strategic vision for the partnership, enabling a diverse range of agencies and bodies to work together effectively to achieve common goals. Strategic leaders should be able to identify the partnership's focus and priorities, outlining the steps to meeting these priorities and committing the necessary resources. The leadership also has a role in evaluating performance, holding each other to account, and supporting problem solving within the partnership. In this section, we set out the statutory requirements and suggested practice that will support partnerships as they seek to embed strong leadership." (Home Office, 2007 P. 22).

Analysis of the issues facing police manager with regard to partnership working shows that information sharing issue is the major challenges that police authorities are like encounter with regard to partnership cooperation with other agencies. One of the major suggestions to overcome the information sharing issue is to design the statutory requirements to assist the strategy partnership leaders to appreciate the importance of information sharing to the success of partnership working. Typically, the government should provide statutory legal requirements in such a way to make partner agencies to understand the duty of all partnership agencies and their duties are to share information that could enhance crime reduction. All responsible authorities must sign the statutory protocol and they should comply with the protocols. More importantly, the protocol should mandate all responsible authorities to nominate a liaison officer whose role is to design effective sharing information strategy that would allow quality decision making. It is appropriate for partnership to share data that could easily identify living individual in order reduce crime and disorder in a community. The role of liaison officer is to serve as single point of information where all partnership agencies will access the required information. Moreover, a liaison officer should be able to address technical problems that partnership agencies could encounter.

Other method to overcome the challenging issues is to design a visible performance management and accountability. Effective partnership requires visible performance management and accountability. An important method to achieve a better performance and accountability is to make communities to be aware that partnership organizations are dealing with their issues.

"All partners should be aware of their responsibilities within the partnership and have appropriate systems in place to provide information to the community. Ensuring that the partnership engages with, involves and regularly offers feedback to the community is crucial in supporting increased feelings of public confidence and reassurance amongst the community" (Home Office, 2007 P44).

OSCE (2008) argues that police needs to be well integrated into the community to enhance safety and social order. To combat social order, it is impossible for the police to carry out the tasks alone. The police needs partnership relationships with other organizations to solve community related problems. First strategy that police should implement is to integrate themselves into the community and strengthen their legitimacy and be accepted by the public.

More importantly, it is possible to get a clear understanding to a problem using problem analysis triangle (PAT) with the target area by considering aspects of crimes that occur within the community. The strategy is to introduce the Routing Activity Theory (PAT) to analyze a problem. The Routing Activity Theory suggests three things that will happen at the same time if crimes are to happen within a community:

A suitable target either object or human;

Lack of a suitable strategic guardian to stop the crime from happening and;

A motivated and likely offender.

Problem analysis triangle provides a helpful method to think about a problem and appropriate strategy to deliver appropriate response to the problem. The plan for action provides the implementation strategies that a police manager could use to overcome the challenging issues.

Planning Process

To overcome the challenging issues that a police manager could encounter in relation to partnership association, there is a need to design an effective planning process to ensure that the police authorities are able derives benefits from the partnership working.

"Effective planning lies at the heart of work undertaken to tackle the problems in communities. The partnership plan is the basis for the partnership to ensure delivery of services that meet the needs of its communities. The partnership plan should also enable individual partnership members to understand their respective roles in supporting delivery across a range of services." (Home Office 2007 P71). The process of plan for action is as follows:

Preparatory Stage