Partnerships in Policing
How Third Parties Help Police to Reduce Crime and Disorder

This Element uses systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the nature and effectiveness of third-party policing partnerships.

Lorraine Mazerolle (Author), Kevin Petersen (Author), Michelle Sydes (Author), Janet Ransley (Author)

9781009471985, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2025

90 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.15 kg

Partnerships in policing are used worldwide to reduce crime and disorder problems. Police forge partnerships with businesses, government agencies, and communities to co-produce public safety. Third-party policing (TPP) is a particular type of partnership that involves the police addressing crime and disorder by working through (and with) third-party partners. This Element focuses on the nature and effectiveness of TPP partnerships. Using systematic review and meta-analytic techniques, it shows that TPP interventions are effective in efforts to reduce crime and disorder, without displacement of these problems. Cooperative partnerships are associated with considerably larger crime control effects than interventions relying on coercive engagement styles. Dyad partnerships – twosome partnerships between police and one third-party partner – are likely to offer the “sweet spot” in TPP. The Element concludes that partnership policing using non-criminal justice legal levers is a promising approach to crime control. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. Introduction
2. Methods
3. Results
4. The role of legal levers
5. Optimizing the number of partners
6. Different engagement styles
7. Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV]