ABSTRACT
Many security-related roles that were customarily the responsibility of governments and public police agencies have become commercialized, devolved, or otherwise dispersed. This phenomenon has been described as ‘multilateralization.’ The paper sets out to analyse the multilateralization of policing as it applies to strategies of supply reduction in the area of illicit synthetic drugs, focusing in particular upon amphetamine type substances. Supply reduction can constitute interventions not ordinarily thought of as drug law enforcement and entail a range of technologies underpinned by regulatory theory. Various strategies of engaging external institutions in furtherance of reducing the supply of illicit synthetic drugs are canvassed. The authors provide an analytical framework for understanding how illicit synthetic drugs can be governed through strategies of co-production and the possible barriers and issues that need to be considered when attempting to engage the crime control capacities of external institutions.
