Police-led partnership responses to high risk youths and their families: Challenges associated with forming successful and sustainable partnerships

Past evaluations of police partnership approaches, including third party policing, document the implementation processes and test the overall impact on crime reduction, but few studies address the challenges inherent in the partnership formation phase. This paper uses a police-led partnership programme - the Family Engagement Strategy (FES) - to explore the barriers and challenges to forming effective and sustainable crime control partnerships. Using depth interviews with 17 agency representatives involved in the FES programme, we find that crime control partnerships are particularly difficult when there is a lack of philosophical fit between partner agencies; when there is a lack of clarity around the project's aims and objectives; when the programme fails to articulate each partners' roles and responsibilities; and when there is a lack of understanding of each other's capacities and boundaries.