NCJ Number
220068
Journal
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume: 9 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer 2007 Pages: 122-134
Date Published
2007
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the trend in England and Wales toward greater criminal justice multiagency and interagency cooperation in reducing crime.
Abstract
The discussion draws on Mike Nash's (1999) concept of "polibation," which is the label given to the use of probation officers to police and manage punishments in the community. This paper examined a project, "Project Chrysalis," in West Midlands that involved a partnership among three criminal justice agencies: the West Midlands Police Service, HM Prison Service West Midlands Area, and the National Probation Service West Midlands Area. The project was administered by the Government Office for the West Midlands. The project's objectives were to enhance work among criminal justice agencies, to target street crime offenders (robbery, pickpocketing, carjacking, and firearms offenses), to resettle these offenders through partnership working and interventions to reduce reoffending, and to interrupt any resumption of offending through swift enforcement. The tasks of this joint enterprise were to identify street crime offenders at conviction or while they were in prison, assess their needs and refer them to a relevant available prison course, and release them to police/probation offender management. The latter tasks involved regular monitoring and risk/needs assessment, including home visits, intelligence monitoring, and allocation to appropriate interventions. This pattern of offender management, which involves prison personnel as well as police and probation officers, might be called "prisi-polibation" under Nash's labeling scheme. The analysis of this project, however, shows that each of the three disciplines involved in the partnership was entrenched in ways of working and in working cultures that obstructed the evolution of "prisi-polibation." Still, the operating environment provided a context within which personnel from all participating agencies extended their orientation to the importance of practices outside of their accustomed boundaries. 1 figure and 28 references