Main description:

The expanding remit of policing as a fundamental part of the public health continuum is increasingly acknowledged on the international scene. Similarly the growing role of health professionals as brokers of public safety means that the need for scholarly resources for developing knowledge and broadening theoretical positioning and questioning is becoming urgent and crucial. The fields of law enforcement and public health are beginning to understand the inextricable links between public safety and public health and the need to shift policies and practices towards more integrated practices. This book comes as a first, an utterly timely scholarly collection that brings together the views of multidisciplinary commentators on a wide range of issues and disciplines within the law enforcement and public health (LEPH) arena. The book addresses the more conceptual aspects of the relationship as well as more applied fields of collaboration, and the authors describe and analyze a range of service delivery examples taken from real-life instances of partnerships in action. Among the topics covered:

Defund, Dismantle or Define
Law Enforcement, Public Health, and Vulnerability
Law Enforcement and Mental Health: The Missing Middle
The Challenges of Sustaining Partnerships and the Diversification of Cultures
Using Public Health Concepts and Metrics to Guide Policing Strategy and Practice
Policing Pandemics

Law Enforcement and Public Health: Partners for Community Safety and Wellbeing is essential reading for a wide array of professions and areas of expertise in the intersectoral field of LEPH. It is an indispensable resource for public health and law enforcement specialists (practitioners, educators, scholars, and researchers) and training programs across the world, as well as individuals interested in developing their knowledge and capacity to respond to complex LEPH issues in the field, including public prosecutors, coroners, and the judiciary. The text also can be used for undergraduate and postgraduate university policing, criminology, sociology, psychology, social work, public health, and medicine programs.

Contents:

(Note that all chapters will feature case studies or vignette of approximately 500-750 words)

Foreword: Safety and security: the shared space of law enforcement and public health

Clifford Shearing, Scott Burris, & Jennifer Wood

Law enforcement and public health are alike in many ways. Both are traditional government services that in modern times have been shared between public and private delivery systems. Both claim preventive roles in relation to social harms but devote considerable resources to responding to harms that have already occurred. Both are practiced within and as expressions of professional cultures. Both can create as well as alleviate harm. They share, to a considerable degree, the same operating spaces as they address specific ills like drug overdose, violence, road safety, and mental illness, and deeper social determinants of health and security like poverty and inequality.

If we were organizing social services from scratch in 2021, we might well decide to organize law enforcement and public health services differently, but as things stand, the challenge is to consider how the two distinct projects can be better aligned for greater cooperation and effectiveness. The Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) Education Special Interest Group of the Global LEPH Association has initiated this collection of papers on the many and diverse facets of the LEPH intersection. In this preface, the authors briefly consider the evolution of the "LEPH" idea, its promise and limitations, and offer some thoughts about the state of the field today.

Preface: Conceptual and practice tensions in LEPH: Public health approaches to policing and police and public health collaborations

Isabelle Bartkowiak-Theron, James Clover, Denise Martin, Richard Southby, & Nick Crofts

The Editorial Team will draft the Preface once the content of the textbook has been reviewed in its entirety.

Chapter 1 - The historical public health and social work role of the police

Isabelle Bartkowiak-Theron, James Clover, Denise Martin, Richard Southby, & Nick Crofts

Drawing on the works of Maurice Punch, Egon Bittner, and others, this chapter provides a historical foundation to the interplay, or sometime the lack thereof, of law enforcement and health systems coordinating responses to protect and support people in the community. As described by Punch (2019, p. ix):

The notion of Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) as a specified field for academic attention and professional practice is relatively recent (Anderson and Burris: 2017). It could be argued, however, that the issue of the interaction between the two "systems" - albeit in different ways and forms - is not all that new and is, in fact, a perennial one which long predates the formation of modern agencies of law enforcement and public health.

This chapter also includes professional reflections from members of the Editorial team on their experience of the interplay, or lack thereof, between systems.

Chapter 2 - Crime reduction and community well-being through community mobilization and leadership

Norm Taylor, Cal Corley, Dale McFee & Matthew Torigian.

In this chapter, two police executives and two executive advisors collaborate to share their informed perspectives and to explore new forms of police leadership that have emerged over the past decade, leading to broad systemic changes in criminal justice and human services delivery across Canada.

Most of what Canadian police officers attend to daily has little to do with criminality. In fact, almost 74% of calls for service involve mental health and addictions, anti-social behaviour, and other social issues. And, the backgrounds of most criminals suggest problems earlier in life, including absent parenting, early development and education, mental health and addictions, inadequate housing, and continuing poverty.

Recognizing that the police cannot 'arrest their way out' of these situations, and that the policing sector is itself faced with continuing economic pressures, Canadian governments, community-based organizations, the private sector, and academia have been thinking differently about how policing and related human services are organized and delivered to achieve improved outcomes for at-risk individuals, families, and communities. The clear consensus is that more integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches, focused both in the present and upstream, are essential if full capacity is to be applied and real improvements are to occur.

Most of the vexing problems facing our communities do not fit nicely within the mandate or realm of any single organization. Traditional government structures do not align with most of the most pressing issues affecting individuals, families, and communities. Manoeuvring through the maze of siloed systems, processes, and procedures is time-consuming and duplicates energies that could otherwise be focused on achieving results. Many are content to work within the existing system. But there is a growing cadre of forward thinking, innovative, and results-oriented police leaders who are actively challenging the status quo and mobilizing action across sectors.

In a historical analysis of policing since the mid-1730s, Kempa (2014) argues that policing is in a period of significant transition, shaped by a number of economic, social, and other drivers. History has shown that such periods of transition are marked by considerable experimentation and a challenging of traditional ways of doing things.The last to change are always the legislative and policy underpinnings across the range of human, information sharing, privacy, and criminal justice systems. But the first to change can be traced to innovative forms of leadership.

Persevering and achieving results during such transitionary times is often not for the faint of heart. Conventional, hierarchical, and agency-specific leadership habits are most often inadequate for moving an entire complex and multidisciplinary system into action. This chapter traces recent experiences in Canada where results-oriented police leaders have been able to bend the system, to work across disciplines, and to effectively mobilize both traditional and non-traditional partners in the quest to markedly improve community safety and well-being outcomes. These stories can help others in shaping new pathways forward within each unique context. The chapter includes several case examples, framed by an analysis of the essential ingredients in leading for leverage.

Chapter 3 - Police officers as public health interventionists and health practitioners as public safety brokers: are these really roles at the margin?

Auke J. van Dijk & Jennifer D. Wood

For most police officers, public health interventions are not seen as their core business but it probably is If only 20% of police time is spent on things that are related to crime, should we associate police work primarily with the criminal justice system? Public health practitioners in neighbourhoods are not primarily working from a medical perspective, their work is - or should be - community-based or at least community-informed and engaged with the overall public safety. In some cases it is public safety that defines the logic behind public health, like with acute high epidemic and pandemic risks.

At the very least both professions have a considerable overlap, and what is needed at this intersection is a common perspective on that shared part of the profession. This chapter treats this overlap as if it were a profession in its own right - and follows the classical definition of a profession consisting of a body of knowledge, body of practice (skills), and a code of ethics.

Ethics is a crucial issue in this context, especially the use of force and the potential friction between individual rights and population outcomes. This translates directly in decisions around e.g., information exchange. Part of shared ethics should be the prevention of crisis and coercion. Interesting enough both professions have a tendency to favor 'crisis' over 'lack of clarity', clearly at the detriment of individual persons as well as community safety and well-being.

Chapter 4 - The challenges of sustaining partnerships and the diversification of cultures

Denise Martin & William Graham

Partnership working and the willingness of different service to collaborate is critical to the success of Law Enforcement and Public Health initiatives. While partnership approaches are not new and can be shown to operate successfully, there are continued challenges around sustaining partnerships in the longer term.

Content explores the commonly cited contributory factors that can undermine longevity of collaborations. These factors include short-term planning cycles, limited resources, shifting priorities, and political pressures. This chapter proposes that these pressures often contribute to the reinforcing of siloed approaches and retreatism back into organisational cultures and norms as a way of managing hurdles that these challenges raise. Using examples from the experience of the authors, this chapter provides examples of partnership success and propose ways that using these success indicators might be useful when considering how to sustain partnerships to enable better working across the LEPH interface.

Chapter 5 - Law enforcement and mental health: The missing middle

Stuart DM Thomas, Inga Heyman, Chris White & Nadine Dougall

Commonly, in the course of their duties, the police will come into contact with people who have a lived experience of mental illness. It is acknowledged that these contacts can and do happen for a wide variety of reasons and in a broad range of circumstances. Increasingly, police have found that they are responding to call outs and situations involving people experiencing a mental health crisis. While there are ongoing tensions among the police, and community members, about whether this should even be considered 'police work' or not, the reality of this situation has required police, health, and social welfare services to develop both local and organisation-level partnerships to help articulate and delineate roles, functions, and professional boundaries. This chapter considers the development and function of these partnerships as they relate to responding to mental health-related situations. We argue that current partnerships are failing to meet the needs of the 'missing middle'; this group represents a significant proportion of the population who have mental health-related needs but do not meet the threshold for admission to public mental health services, and for whom other community-based care and support are insufficient. The chapter authors exemplify these limitations by focusing on mental health presentations to Emergency Departments and look to pockets of innovation internationally that have sought to address what represents a significant unmet need.

Chapter 6 - Violence as a public health issue, and its prevention

Stan Gilmour, Richard Bent, Guy Lamb, Zara Quigg

Violence and its prevention are of major relevance to overall public health and safety, and the necessary adjustment in how social policy responds to violence in the community calls for integrated partnership. Violence Reduction Units involving close collaborations have been critical in the development of public health approaches to violence prevention. Non-governmental groups such as Cure Violence, whose mission is to reduce violence globally using disease control and the support of behaviour change, are showing promise on the response to managing community violence. Equally there is evidence that governments are recognizing the overwhelming connection between violence and missing social determinants of health, as exemplified by the work being directed by the Mayor of London (UK) Sadiq Khan. This chapter informs the audience to the growing body of knowledge that supports the links between violence and public health.

Chapter 7 - LEPH, ethnic minorities, and socio-cultural diversity

Author(s) not yet confirmed

Any social policy response, whether in policing, health, or similar disciplines, must take into account the uniqueness and the vulnerabilities that exist within and amongst our diverse communities within society. Ethnic and racialized minorities, including indigenous communities, are at often vastly increased risk of involvement with criminal justice and have very impaired health indicators.

Chapter 8 - First responders' stress and resilience as a matter of the public health

Katy Kamkar & Grant Edwards

The nature of the policing requires regular engagement in traumatic events. Coupled with shift work, long hours, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and at a ready state of continual hyper-vigilance, police are increasingly suffering psychological injuries. In this chapter, Commander Grant Edwards relates his personal experiences in how he developed and has dealt with mental health trauma. The health of our police organizations needs to be a consideration as part of the overall public health, and these stories and lessons are applicable to many sectors in society.

Content includes the importance of healthy organizational culture and leadership, steps for police workplace mental health strategy including interventions at individual and organizational levels, and the topic of moral suffering in police work, compassion fatigue, and burnout, along with modifiable factors including all of the above mentioned to mitigate risk to psychological injuries.

Chapter 9 - Alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs: crimes vs. public health issues

Author(s) not yet confirmed.

Many communities struggle with the impact of substance use and addiction, whether of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs. There is much tension between criminal justice approaches and public health approaches to issues around psychoactive substances, with a generally agreed role for police in regulation and reduction of harm related to the use of legal substances, but much contention about roles and responsibilities in relation to drugs currently classified as illegal.

Chapter 10 - LEPH and vulnerability

Isabelle Bartkowiak-Theron & Nicole Asquith

There is now widespread scholarly and practice agreement that vulnerability is at the very core of law enforcement and public health partnerships. Practitioners also agree that 'clients' are the same across sectors: police often encounter individuals who have been receiving the care of public health practitioners, or, at the very least, been on the radar of these practitioners.

Legislation and policy have, however, remained shy in approaching joint definitions of vulnerability that would help disciplinary and practice collaborations in the field, despite calls for collaboration across sectors. As a result, siloed practices remain the norm and are quickly becoming outdated in terms of service delivery efficiency and appropriate care. This chapter identifies the reasons why seeking a better integration of practice across all sectors is a worthwhile pursuit. The content argues that the futility of debates around disciplinary specificity and fenced-in budgets are at the detriment of better-targeted, holistic service delivery for vulnerable people. It also goes against economic arguments that constantly ask for rationalisation. On the contrary: multidisciplinary practice in law enforcement and public health can show significant return on investment and timely recuperation of costs.

Chapter 11 - Epidemiological Criminology

Bridging the Knowledge Gap: Developing a National Training Model for Law Enforcement and Public Health Professionals from an Epidemiological Criminology Perspective

Timothy A. Akers, Rodney Hill, Paul Archibald, Tina Billington-Hughes, & William Hervey

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." A well-known quote from The Wizard of Oz is very applicable to the topic of this chapter, Epidemiological Criminology ("EpiCrim"). EpiCrim is an emerging theoretical and practical framework that can bridge the knowledge gap between academies and professionals in law enforcement and public health. The emergence of new modalities, techniques, and approaches among the biological, psychological, sociological, and environmental determinants can further bring forth both the subtle and overt practices across these seemingly diverse professions.

Law Enforcement has always seen the public's health as their basic tenet while public health has teetered back and forth between enforcement and prevention. Epidemiological Criminology also integrates both the subtle and overt distinctions between the biomedical and behavioral disparities common to these perspectives while, at the same time, introduces new insights, models, and approaches to the centuries-old ways both professions recruit, train, and practice.

Chapter 12 - Evidence-informed policing: Using public health metrics and evidence to shape policing strategy and practice.

Brandon del Pozo

As the challenges communities face become more complex, police are being asked to form closer partnerships with other institutions and agencies in all aspects of their work, from response to mental health and drug crises, to homeless conditions and addressing violent crime. To form the most effective partnerships, police leaders can benefit from a good grasp of the methods of public health.

This chapter reveals how leveraging the concepts and measures within public health can allow police agencies to identify goals and problem-solving techniques that focus on concepts such as epidemiology and structural determinants of health to go beyond arrests, seizures, and crime rates, and to deliver public safety in collaboration with partners that minimizes negative collateral consequences for all.

Chapter 13 - The role of police in the response to HIV

Nick Crofts & David Patterson

Police behaviours are the key determinants of the risk environment for many people at risk of HIV. This is especially the case for street-based communities of sex workers and people who inject drugs, but applies to other marginalised communities such as MSM and transgendered people, as well. The injurious impact of much police behaviour towards these communities has been well-documented. What is not so well-documented is how these behaviours can be changed, and how they are being changed, to make allies of police in the struggle against HIV rather than enemies.

Police can play a vital role in facilitating access to life-saving services that seek to reduce the impact of HIV in their community. By ameliorating the potential harmful impacts of the application of criminal and administrative laws in some circumstances, and reducing stigmatization and discrimination to which key populations are exposed, police can play a vital leadership role in the fight against HIV and other harmful aspects of drug use.

There is an increasing number and range of HIV prevention and care programs in which police are working as effective partners; this chapter critically evaluates the role of police in the HIV response and distills and learns from the experience of those working successfully with police against HIV and discrimination.

Chapter 14 - Southern policing and the applicability of LEPH to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)

Melissa Jardine & Auke van Dijk

Explorations of law enforcement and public health (LEPH) issues have been concentrated in the global North (Punch & James, 2016) despite more than half of the world's population being found in the global South and with much more diverse experiences.

The utility of LEPH approaches as mechanisms for protecting public safety and enhancing community well-being are increasingly being examined with a view to developing a theoretical framework to analyse the multiple intersections of LEPH (van Dijk et al, 2019).

Drawing on a Southern perspective (Connell, 2007; Carrington et al, 2016; Jardine, 2019), this chapter illuminates the importance of developing a LEPH framework that can account for the diversity of experience across both global North and South. We do this by drawing attention to a range of variables that shape knowledge of, or the design and implementation of, LEPH approaches - or their absence. These variables include examining the international environment, global information networks, and dissemination; political regimes and ideologies; national level/societal cultures; overarching policing paradigms; occupational cultures (i.e., police and health); individual conditions, vulnerable groups, and places; as well as tangible and intangible resources such as available infrastructure and levels of trust in public institutions, among others. The authors argue that these variables interact in myriad ways that are not necessarily unidirectional or linear, and subsequently have important implications for understanding the role of police services and other agencies in public protection in the global South.

Chapter 15 - Emergency preparedness: law enforcement and health working together

Karl Roberts (et al)

The necessity for interoperability amongst health and law enforcement is at no time more relevant as it is now with the pandemic of COVID-19. Providing sufficient and appropriate support to manage the public's health and safety requires close and effective collaboration.

Chapter 16 - LEPH education

Richard Southby, Inga Heyman, Isabelle Bartkowiak et al.

Increasing expectations placed upon all sectors, including policing, will require each discipline to explore and reimagine what education and training is provided to current and future practitioners. This becomes further complicated when these sectors seek improved interoperability amongst each other.

This chapter explores the challenges and opportunities that exist when developing and delivering LEPH education, and offers the audience suggestions and considerations for developing and delivering LEPH education within their respective area or discipline. These suggestions and considerations are drawn from the content of the chapters contained, as a conclusion to the textbook and encouragement for further research, collaboration, and action.

Chapter 17 -- Policing Pandemics
Professor Karl Roberts, World Health Organisation, Western Sydney University and University of Johannesburg; Dr Victoria Herrington, Australian Institute of Police Management, Australia
Currently the world is in the grip of a pandemic, COVID-19. This has presented many challenges to governments in general and to police in particular. Police have a significant role in a nation's response to a pandemic carrying out a range of important functions. These might include enforcing quarantine, isolation, and travel bans; providing security to medical personnel; protecting and transporting medical equipment, vaccines, and medical samples; providing advice and reassurance to the public; supporting investigations into the source of an outbreak; identifying new cases of disease or who is at risk from it. In cases where a disease is suspected of having been started as a result of human action, law enforcement will likely take the lead in investigations to identify and bring the culprit to justice. All of these roles will be added to many of the usual policing duties required during a pandemic. There are, however, many challenges for police in responding to pandemics. They may be required to engage with agencies such as Public Health that they don't normally work with. This can cause difficulties with lack of mutual understanding of processes, policies, and practices and lack of trust between agencies. Other challenges include protecting officers from infection, safe handling of samples, and effective management of stress, anxiety, and possible bereavement amongst police staff. All of this in a context of likely high staff attrition. This chapter explores policing during pandemics, the challenges faced by police, and potential solutions.
Chapter 18 -- Role of Prosecutors in Achieving the Public Health Mission (TBD)
Author(s) not yet confirmed.

Abstract forthcoming