Innovative Police Responses to Drug Problems: Exploring a Third-Party Policing Partnership Between Police and Community Pharmacy

Abstract

Third-party policing partnerships are a policing innovation increasingly discussed in the crime prevention literature, but what we actually know about third-party policing partnerships is extremely limited. In the main, studies examine voluntary communityoriented partnerships, ‘hot-spots’ approaches and strategies utilising legal-levers to mobilise third-parties to perform a crime prevention or crime control response. Typically, the results of such studies are observed through changes to crime and disorder concerning the particular intervention at the designated place. However rarely do studies seek to understand the processes underpinning the development and implementation of third-party policing partnerships which are mandated by regulation; the role of third-parties; the role of regulation in the mobilisation of the partnership; the impact of the intervention for the third-party; or the effectiveness of the strategy from the perspective of the regulated third-parties. This dissertation seeks to further understand how such third-party policing partnerships are developed; how they are implemented; the nature of their impact; and how they perform against their crime control objectives. This study of third-party policing partnerships draws upon a case study of a policing partnership implemented to control access to pseudoephedrine products from community pharmacies. Products containing pseudoephedrine are utilised as a key precursor chemical in the domestic manufacture of illicit synthetic drugs such as methylamphetamine in clandestine laboratories. Hence the diversion of these products for non-therapeutic purposes represents a serious crime problem.