how to make police-researcher partnerships mutually effective

How to make police-researcher

partnerships mutually effective

Dr Lisa Tompson, Dr Jyoti Belur (University College London)

Julia Morris and Rachel Tuffin (College of Policing)

l.tompson@ucl.ac.uk

UCL DEPARTMENT OF SECURITY AND CRIME SCIENCE

Overview

• Types of partnership

• Organisational culture

• Forces for and against

• An attempt to create a model

– Disclaimer – all models are wrong, but some are useful1

1 Box, G. E. P. (1979), "Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building", in Launer, R. L.;

Wilkinson, G. N., Robustness in Statistics, Academic Press, pp. 201–236.

Types of partnership2

1) Cooperation

– Short-term and informal partnerships

2) Coordination

– More formal partnerships that centre on a

specific project or goal. The partnership ends

with the conclusion of the project.

3) Collaboration

– Formalized long-term partnerships where

police agencies and researchers work together

on multiple projects over time.

Knowledge transfer

(one way)

Knowledge

exchange

(two way)

2 Rojek, J., Martin, P. and Alpert, G.P. (2015). Developing and Maintaining police-researcher Partnerships to

Facilitate Research Use: A comparative analysis, New York, USA: Springer-Verlag

Different solar systems

• ‘Doers’

– Decisive

– Political

– Pragmatic

– Street smarts

– Uncomfortable with uncertainty

• ‘Thinkers’

– Reflective

– Critical

– Objective

– Intellectual, esoteric

– Comfortable with complexity

• Distinctly different organisational cultures:

– Values

– Reward systems

– Languages

Force field analysis of partnerships

ST

RO

NG

WE

AK

FORCES IN SUPPORT FORCES AGAINST

Trust

Communication

Operational relevance of

research findings

Researchers’ collegiality,

neutrality and discretion

Valuing each other’s culture &

contribution

Mutual respect (and trust)

Frequent & frank communication

Outcomes, timescales & barriers

discussed; flexible research plan

Research co-produced

Police chain of command &

organisational instability

Senior officer team ‘buy in’

at beginning & end of project

Transcending these differences

• An effective partnership is mutually beneficial, producing

reciprocated knowledge

• The model presented here is a thought experiment, but

underpinned by:

– Our collective experience of partnership dynamics

– Survey data from people with partnership experience

– A validation exercise with practitioners

Cooperation model (one example)

• Many other scenarios exist

– E.g. A practitioner contacting a researcher for

advice or analytic support

– All characterised by a light amount of

interaction between individuals (rather than

institutions), with one-way knowledge transfer

Coordination partnerships

• Coordination partnerships are purposeful

– With explicit objectives and a shared agenda

• A cooperation partnership may mature into a coordination

partnership

– Through the crystallisation of trust and mutual respect

• Coordination partnerships do not though depend on pre-

existing relationships

– Impetus from funding conditions

– Require specialist knowledge or skills

Coordination model

• A more elaborate model is needed to capture the

substantive, complex or sensitive projects undertaken by

these partnerships

• We organise this into four stages:

1) Initiation

2) Planning

3) Building trust and

4) Co-production of knowledge

Coordination model - the initiation stage

• Multiple starting points (and end points)

• Senior officer team buy-in crucial to secure at early stage

Coordination model - the planning stage

• Dialogue at planning stage should aim to clarify and

manage the expectations of the project

• Research plan may need to be adaptable to changes in the

policing environment

Coordination model - the trust building stage

• Trust is fragile and needs constant reinforcement

Coordination model - generating findings stage

• Interim findings speak to the police’s need for timely

updates

• Police partners should help to operationalise the findings

– Research partners should ensure the implementation plan is faithful

to the original research

In an ideal world

Receptivity to

research

Receptivity to

practice

How does this relate to your own experience?

• Have we got anything wrong?

• Have we got anything right?!

Thanks for listening

Coming soon…

Tompson, L., Belur, J., Morris, J. & Tuffin, R. (2017). Elevating research

receptivity through experiential learning: police-researcher partnerships In: J.

Knutsson & L. Tompson (Eds.) Advances in Evidence Based Policing. Routledge:

Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Dr Lisa Tompson, Dr Jyoti Belur (University College London)

Julia Morris and Rachel Tuffin (College of Policing)

l.tompson@ucl.ac.uk