ABSTRACT
The late 1980s and early 1990s marked a shift in police practices away from a professional, bureaucratic model to the employment of community and problem-oriented policing.* This new paradigm has expanded the police mandate from traditional goals of arrest and deterrence to include a responsibility for crime prevention, problem solving, community engagement, and the formation of community and interagency partnerships (Roth et al., 2000; Braga, 2002; U.S. Department of Justice, 2003; Skogan & Frydl, 2004). In some cities, police work with municipal agencies, community-based organizations, and other social actors to improve community relationships, enhance their institutional legitimacy, control crime, and achieve other policy goals. This
The Potential Value of Interagency Collaboration 98 A Framework for Collaboration 100
Referrals 100 Interagency Collaboration 102 Advocacy 103
Transforming Police Culture 104 Organizational Structure 105 Police Leadership 106 Education and Training 107 Creating Opportunities and Incentives for Collaboration 109
Conclusion 110 Acknowledgment 112 References 112
transformation has the potential to increase police involvement in the social policy arena, situating police as change agents rather than simply enforcers of the status quo.*
Yet while most police departments are now involved in some form of problem-oriented and community policing, interagency and community partnerships continue to pose a challenge for many departments. A national evaluation of the Community Oriented Policing Services found that while “problem-solving partnerships for coordinating the appropriate application of … resources are commonplace in many … agencies … all too often, partnerships are in name only, or simply standard, temporary working arrangements” (Roth et al., 2000, p. 20). Furthermore, while police collaboration with social service agencies is an important element of community and problem-oriented policing, such partnerships have not received systematic research attention.† The growing body of literature on community and problem-oriented policing tends to focus on the challenges of citizen engagement (for example, Fung, 2004; Herbert, 2006; Skogan, 2006; Wycoff, 1994) and the decentralization of police bureaucracies (Greene, Bergman, & McLaughlin, 1994; Weisel & Eck, 1994; Wilkinson & Rosenbaum, 1994; Wilson, 1989). While the scholarship developed from Wilson and Kelling’s (1982) well-known broken windows thesis is replete with examples of interagency partnerships, the emphasis is largely on physical changes to the urban environment, such as graffiti, trash removal, or housing code enforcement (see Fung, 2004; Moore, 1999; Skogan, 2006; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997; Sparrow, Moore, & Kennedy, 1990).‡ The dominance of these approaches in community policing-both in research and
in practice-has resulted in a tendency to focus on tangible, visible results, rather than long-term solutions through social service provision.
