INTERAGENCY COOPERATION AND COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME-PREVENTION - SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK OF PEARSON AND COLLEAGUES

The role of 'inter-agency' co-operation in the sphere of crime prevention has been promoted increasingly, by central and local government policy initiatives in recent years. In this paper we consider a number of theoretical issues raised by the examination of power relations in inter-organizational contexts and the definitional processes through which local crime 'problems' are identified and translated into policies and practice. The work of Geoffrey Pearson and colleagues represents the pre-eminent contribution to criminological understanding in the field. In this paper we develop a sympathetic critique of their work. In doing so we draw on our own two-year research study of the social dynamics of inter-agency co-operation in a number of metropolitan and shire county community-based crime prevention initiatives.