how to make police-researcher partnerships mutually effective
TRANSCRIPT
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)
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)