Third Party Policing in the 21 st Century: The Role of Police in Contemporary Regulatory Networks

1. Third Party Policing in the 21st Century: The Role of Police in Contemporary Regulatory Networks By Professor Lorraine Mazerolle University of Queensland

2. Acknowledgements Michael Buerger, my co-author of “Third Party Policing: A Theoretical Analysis of an Emerging Trend” in Justice Quarterly, Vol 15, No 2, June 1998. Janet Ransley, my co-author of “Third Party Policing,” 2006. Cambridge University Press.

3. Been on Vacation Skiing!! Perisher, July 2010 This is day 3!

4. Day 4!!

5. What is Third Party Policing (TPP)? What is the broader context? Where does TPP fit into debates about governance, regulation and risk? How effective is third party policing? Does it work? For what types of crimes? What are the challenges and future directions for third party policing into the 21st century? Outline of Presentation

6. Definition: Police efforts that utilize legal levers to co-opt, persuade or coerce third parties (e.g. regulators, business owners, property owners and other non-offending persons) to take responsibility for preventing or reducing crime problems. Key Feature #1: It is the police who initiate the partnership by creating, enlisting or coercing “third parties” to do something about controlling or preventing crime problems. Key Feature #2: The third party has access to a special type of “legal lever” and it is this legal lever that makes the partnership attractive to police and defines the intervention. What is Third Party Policing?

7. The Relationship between TPP and POP About 50% of POP projects involve at least one TPP tactic (see Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006; summary of Goldstein awards 1994-2003). Less than 1/3rd of TPP initiatives follow the POP process, either implicitly or explicitly. POP TPP Parameters of the activated legal lever dictate the TPP process; Facilitated by forces external to the police, especially the rise of responsive regulation; Derives authority through laws & regulatory provisions. • SARA drives process; • Facilitated by significant government investment and internal police policy; • Derives legitimate authority through consultation & cooperation.

8. Shift away from old, state-centered models of governance -> deregulated, market-based models of governance that encompassed broad regulatory networks Reductions in the size and power of the public sector Privatization of key commercial activities (e.g. aviation, banking, and telecommunications) Privatization of basic infrastructure and services (e.g. water, gas and electricity) A new focus on the outputs of regulation (e.g. quality assurance, rather than detailed oversight of inputs and activities) Imposition of corporate management, or new public management, on public sector agencies (including performance standards and evaluation) Late 20th Century Societal Transformations

9. Encourages a plurality of regulatory organizations (e.g. public agencies, professional & community organisations, individuals) Creates a multiplicity of regulatory “nodes” that together regulate activity Maintains central state control over regulatory policy Fosters global, regulatory networks But, the recent GFC reveals the dark side of de-regulation! The 21st Century “New Regulatory State”

10. The transformation from old, state-focused models of governance to responsive regulation involved agencies to shift from: reactive hierarchies  risk management teams; command & control tactics  compliance-based systems; the use of formal sanctions  the use of cooperation, persuasion and incentives for compliance Contemporary Regulatory Agencies

11. Third party policing is one way that responsive regulation is manifested at the street level of crime control and prevention External dynamics (rather than explicit police policies and priorities) create TPP opportunities and drive TPP initiatives TPP relies upon a multiplicity of nodes in a regulatory network (e.g. building inspectors, licensing authorities, health inspectors) The process of TPP draws on a hierarchy of legal levers (most often regulatory levers) that are applied to ensure compliance TPP in the New Regulatory State

12. Changing police models Source: Adapted from Kelling & Moore (1988)

13. In partnership with other organisations (sometimes coerced via legislation), police use a range of civil, regulatory and administrative laws to create or enhance crime control partnerships or networks. Functions include: crime, security and terrorism control, crime prevention, regulation and social policy. Tactics include: use of information technologies, new surveillance approaches, intelligence-led policing. Organizational design: centralized specialist teams, fusion centers, secondments to external agencies. TPP in an era of uncertainty

14. Third party policing co-opts and utilizes a broad range of existing regulatory laws, civil laws, ordinances, codes, town by-laws etc to gain a crime control benefit Police use legal powers and levers not otherwise available to them Someone with power to act on a crime problem is given incentive to do so, voluntarily (e.g. reduce truancy) or with express or implied threats of coercion (eg licensing/building penalties, contract termination, child removal) Police take advantage of non-criminal justice responses (e.g. civil penalties and sanctions) to control problems Can lead to enhanced social control without constraints of criminal law Advantages of TPP

15. Potential for civil law to be misused as a way around criminal law protections Potential for police misconduct (e.g. abuse of authority) Unintended consequences (e.g. eviction might lead to homelessness; shop owners may become vulnerable to retaliation; coerced third parties might feel manipulated by the police) Potential for co-opting/re-directing regulatory resources that might be better used otherwise (e.g. strained relations emerging with other regulatory nodes) Possibility of displacement The Challenges of TPP

16. Legal Frameworks for Third Party Policing Source: Mazerolle & Ransley (2005)

17. TPP gives police access to civil sanctions: Court ordered repairs/upgrades/use restrictions Fines Damages/nuisance actions Forfeiture Forced sales Eviction Temporary or permanent closure License restrictions Arrest & incarceration for failure to comply Sanctions and Penalties

18. Grants, subsidies, assistance Public praise & awards Reduced supervision in return for internal compliance programs Waiver of penalties in return for reporting & cooperating Encouragement of whistle-blowing (under Qui tam writs) Positive Inducements

19. Council by laws Drug free zones Lease conditions Liquor licensing Housing codes Legal Levers & Controlling Drug Problems • Gang abatement laws • Drug nuisance abatement laws • Mandatory reporting of pharmaceutical sales

20. City Ordinances (e.g. 2 staff members at convenience stores) Health and Safety Codes Uniform Building Standards Drug Nuisance Abatement Laws Fire safety regulations Liquor Licensing Laws (e.g. hours of alcohol sales) Legal Levers & Controlling Violent Crime

21. Alcohol free zones Duty of care legislation Unleashed dog ordinance Restraining orders (used to target prostitutes) Legal Levers & Problem Places

22. Liquor licensing laws Curfews Truancy laws Probation and parole conditions Legal Levers & Controlling Juveniles

23. Cooperation Consultation Persuasion Coercion Threats Initiation of formal legal action Tools and Techniques to Recruit Third Parties

24. Ad hoc and episodic As part of a problem-oriented policing project As part of a crime prevention initiative Mandated via legislation (e.g. Britain’s Crime and Disorder Act, 1998) When the police abdicate responsibility to a non-police regulator (e.g. contracting out crime control) Types of Implementation

25. Quantitative review (or meta-analyses) undertaken to examine the effects of third party policing on drug problems, violent crime problems, crimes in places, crimes committed by juveniles, and property crime Lorraine Mazerolle & Janet Ransley, 2006. “Third Party Policing,” Cambridge University Press. Can third party policing reduce crime?

26. Campbell Collaboration. See www.campbellcollaboration.org Meta-analysis is a range of systematic, quantitative methods that are used to synthesize research findings from multiple studies on a similar topic or issue The key to meta-analysis is the calculation of an effect size. The effect size is the magnitude of a specific intervention’s effect independent of the study’s sample size Calculating an effect size enables one to compare and contrast individual research findings What is meta-analysis?

27. Database search from criminology, government, medicine, education, psych etc Examine prior reviews (e.g. Sherman, Eck) Scan reference lists of all located studies Relevant websites (e.g. POP center) Contact with researchers and PhD students Phyllis Schultze and the Rutgers Library Search Strategy

28. Internal validity (e.g. randomisation, control group, pre and post intervention data) External validity (e.g. is the sample representative of the population?, replicability?) Descriptive/reporting validity (e.g. effect size, sample size, intervention details, design details) Design integrity/methodological quality (e.g. are there any controls for threats to validity?, Displacement/diffusion analysis?) Classification Criteria

29. We identified 77 studies that used a third party policing tactic 8/21 drug crime; 2/21 violent crime; 0/15 public disorder; 1/11 juvenile crime and 1/9 property crime studies were included in the meta-analysis (12/77 or 16% were included) We calculated 23 effect sizes across the 12 studies (2 outcomes had too large confidence intervals to be included in the presentation of results) Summary of Search Results

30. There are many approaches to measuring effect size There is a general failure in the law enforcement literature to report important data characteristics to enable calculation of effect sizes (e.g. standard deviation, sample size, p values) Most of our quantitative review uses the odds-ratio, which is a comparison between two groups in terms of the relative odds of an outcome i.e. the odds of a crime after, given a crime before In some cases the standardised mean difference between the intervention and control group (Hedge’s d) was calculated Effect Size Statistics

31. Table 1: Third Party Policing Strategies Targeting Drug-Related Crime (Odds Ratio)a ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ a The “arrest” outcome from the Clarke and Birchler-Richardson (1998) study, as well as the “males selling drugs” from the Mazerolle (1998) study were excluded given their extremely large confidence intervals. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

32. Table 2: Third Party Policing Strategies Targeting Other Crime (Odds Ratio) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

33. Property owners are the most common third parties (i.e. proximate targets, burden bearers) TPP can reduce drug problems (11/16 or 69% revealed desirable outcomes) Many TPP studies have poor evaluation designs and fail to present sufficient data that could be reasonably used to calculate an effect size Difficult to isolate the unique contribution of the TPP intervention, when multiple interventions occurring at the same time Summary of Results

34. Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship - $2.6 million from 2010 to 2014; Update systematic review of TPP using the i-Library – automated web-crawling, text mining facility; Funding for 3 Randomized Controlled Trials to test key tenets of TPP; First trial will be with the Queensland Police, targeting Truant Young People; REXNET – simultaneous trials across the world using TPP to test approaches for controlling Persistent and Prolific Offenders (PPOs). Site in Queensland = Townsville. Future Directions