INTER-AGENCY CO-OPERATION AND COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME PREVENTION

Abstract

The role of 'inter-agency' co-operation in the sphere of crime prevention has been promoted increasingly by central and local government policy initiatives in recent years. In this paper we consider a number of theoretical issues raised by the examination of power relations in inter organizational contexts and the definitional processes through which local crime 'problems' are identified and translated into policies and practice. The work of Geoffrey Pearson and colleagues represents the pre-eminent contribution to criminological understanding in the field. In this paper we develop a sympathetic critique of their work. In doing so we draw on our own two-year research study of the social dynamics of inter-agency co-operation in a number of metropolitan and shire county community-based crime prevention initiatives. In the past decade a growing body of opinion has developed in academic and government circles that the most effective delivery of crime prevention emphasizes the co-operation of state agencies together with the public at the local level.1 The importance of 'multi-agency' or 'partnership' work has been repeatedly stressed in recent years. The Home Office circulars 8/84 and 44/90, and the 'good practice' booklet which accompanied the latter circular (Home Office 1990), have acted as important catalysts in this process. In addition to repeated policy statements, multi agency work has been promoted through financial incentives at both the national and local levels, to the extent that some forms of funding are now only available through a commitment to partnership work.2 The 'multi-agency' approach has increasingly come to be seen as a panacea for recurring crises within criminal justice. Yet, aside from the plethora of'outcome' evaluation studies (see for example Forrester et al. 1988, 1990) there remains little serious criminological attention given to the broader implications of the multi-agency approach for the processes of policy formation and implementation and the emergence of new corporatist administrative arrangements for local gover nance. While wary of the dangers of reifying 'multi-agency' to the level of a pseudo-science,3 we wish to argue that there is a need to address and understand the complex social processes involved in inter-agency collaboration and their relation to the ongoing restructuring of the system of crime control and prevention.