Redefining Roles and Relationships

Redefining Roles and Relationships The development of partnerships in law enforcement is not a new idea, but it does appear that today's police are much more likely to enter into partnerships than their predecessors, especiallyat the local level.One reasonfor this new collaborativemindset on the part of the nation's21,143police agencies (Maguire,et al., 1998)is the adoption of community policing in manyof thesejurisdictions. While a reviewof the researchon the implementation and impact of community police reforms is beyond the scope of this article (for such review see, e.g., National Research Council, 2004), it is worth noting that community policing programs do represent a fundamental shift in strategy: rather than working alone (or in teams with other officers) patrol officers are encouraged to meet and work with community groups, personnel from social services, public health, and other criminal justice agencies to address the community's crime/order maintenance problems. As part of this new collaborative orientation, partnerships between police and a wide variety of agencies and community groups, including state and local corrections, are encouraged as an appropriate problem-solving strategy. Critics of community policing have pointed out that one consequence of such collaboration is to increase the span of control of police agencies, particularly in disadvantaged areas. With the help of these new "partners:' local police can collect better and more detailed intelligence on residents, expand the scope of searches, and target both individuals (e.g. gang members, sex offenders) and "hot spot" areas (e.g. crack houses) for removal from the community. As Manning (2003) has pointed out, short-term gains in order-maintenance in low income, inner-city areas may be followed by longterm losses (moral, social, political) in these same communities, due to the negative consequences of incarceration on offenders, their families, and the communities in which they reside (and to which they will return). The potential for such unintended consequences must certainly be considered in the types of police-corrections partnerships highlighted in this article. In addition to community policing reforms, sentencing reform can certainly be considered as another compelling impetus for police-corrections partnerships. Due to our reliance on incarceration as the "sanction of choice" for many crime categories (particularly drug offenders), we now have over 2 million inmates in custody in the United States. Last year, 600,000 of these inmates were released from federal, state and local facilities, a three-fold increase from just 20 yearsago (RANDResearchBrief,2003).Due to changes in "good time" provisions, tougher parole eligibility, and the establishment of mandatory minimum sentences, one in five of these new prison releasees were max-outs, which effectively means that they returned to the community without the supervision, services, and control provided by community corrections agencies (e.g. probation, parole). Who (if anyone) should fill this supervision, service, and control void? In many jurisdictions, the surveillance and control responsibility appears to be moving to the local police, who are likely to view prison JamesM. Byrne Don Hummer