SeriesLaw enforcement and public health: recognition and enhancement of joined-up solutions
Introduction
The health of the public requires and is dependent on the safety and security of the individual; therefore, public health as a discipline promotes safety and security. The law exists to promote safety and security and the enforcement of law is part of the same endeavour. The public health and law enforcement sectors should work together with overlapping goals and collaboration to achieve safety and security for populations. The fact that they are often unable to achieve, or inadequately achieve efficient collaboration, even when dealing with the same populations or issues, is to the detriment of both sectors.
Although the past few decades have shown an unprecedented growth in collaboration between these sectors, especially in welfare states in developed countries, the collaboration has not led to a unified political agenda. Consequently, there is a permanent and real risk of returning, perhaps temporarily (but at great cost), to the specialisation perspective of the industrial era, especially considering the trends of austerity and neo-liberal ideology in many developed countries. Increased worries about state security, encompassing mass migration, terrorism, and economic insecurity, could lead to a return to a siloed approach in dealing with problems, emphasising the importance of forging structural collaborations on the basis of interdisciplinary evidence. In this Series paper we focus on high-income countries specifically. However, developing countries, with their surfeit of complex social problems magnified by the complications of democratic fragility, have even more to gain from a coherent understanding and complementarity coordination of law enforcement and public health efforts.
Section snippets
At the boundaries of established fields
The global population is faced with complex social issues that have an effect on health and criminal justice, including social and economic inequalities; vulnerability to violence, especially gender-based violence in domestic settings; mental health crises; alcohol and drug dependence and related harms such as HIV infection; dementia and expected increases in calls for assistance; and modern slavery and human trafficking. Recognition of the multidimensional character of such issues is
An emerging agenda
Public health and law enforcement are products of the process of modernisation, intimately related to the state and to urbanisation. In (hypothetical) small communities in which all individuals know about the condition and behaviour of others, separate institutionalised and professional law enforcement and public health would be absent. Therefore, modern public health and law enforcement replicate the support provided by kin in small communities that has been lost in the rise of modern life and
Areas of common ground for law enforcement and public health
Substantive themes for the International Conference on Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) 2016—reflecting the priorities assigned by the burgeoning law enforcement and public health community—were mental health (many aspects), violence (especially gender-based), trauma (especially road and occupational), crises and catastrophes, infectious diseases, and alcohol and other drugs. However, the range of topics that was covered 2 years later at LEPH 2018 was even wider than in 2016, and
The challenge of meaningful collaboration
An analysis of health and welfare service provision to individuals with complex needs found that combining medical and social models was very difficult, because they have different financial and regulatory systems, roles and responsibilities, and organisational and professional cultures.45 The analysis did not include collaborations with law enforcement. Although societal problems are at the centre of the endeavours of both law enforcement and public health, the organisation principles and
What could the relationship look like?
The fact that law enforcement and public health address the same or related problems in the same communities does not automatically lead to cooperation; they are distinct in culture and methods. Two levels of linkage are needed to support effective cooperation. One consists of a conceptual interface between the fields, at which they can achieve a shared understanding of their respective contributions to each other's mission; a simple model of health and policing that shows how police activities
Conclusion
The emerging agenda regarding the intersectoral field of law enforcement and public health is that a holistic approach will generate the best results, but it seems very hard to achieve this approach in practice. The gap is increasing between knowledge of actions necessary to deal with complex social problems—both in law enforcement and public health—and what can be achieved, which is related to the mismatch between classic institutions and the increased demands for security and health. The
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Maurice Punch who reviewed an early version of the manuscript.
References (50)
- et al.
Police as streetcorner psychiatrist: managing the mentally ill
Int J Law Psychiatry
(1992) - et al.
Researching law enforcement and public health
Policing Soc
(2017) - et al.
Protecting people, promoting health: a public health approach to violence prevention for England
(2012) Rethinking the brain: new insights into early development
(1997)Incubated in terror: neurodevelopment-mental factors in the cycle of violence
- et al.
Law enforcement and public health as an emerging field
Policing Soc
(2017) - et al.
The evidence-based policing matrix
J Exp Criminol
(2011) - et al.
Strengthening Public Health capacity and services in Europe: a concept paper
Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health
(2008)- et al.
Fair society healthy lives (the Marmot review)
(2010)
Central problems in social theory: action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis
Governing security
Before the bobbies: the night watch and police reform in metropolitan London, 1720–1830
Crafting the domain of policing and public health in Amsterdam
EJPS
Deinstitutionalization and mental health services
Sci Am
Landscapes of despair: from deinstitutionalization to homelessness
Smarter crime control: a guide to a safer future for citizens, communities, and politicians
What matters in policing? Change, values and leadership in turbulent times
Constitution of WHO: principles
Human development report
The Munro report on child protection: a child centred system. Final report
Effectiveness of anonymised information sharing and use in health service, police, and local government partnership for preventing violence related injury: experimental study and time series analysis
BMJ
Civil contingencies Act 2004
Building communities from the inside out. A path toward finding and mobilizing a community's assets
History of violence as a public health problem
Virtual Mentor
Cited by (56)
Worry about crime and loneliness in nine countries of the former Soviet Union
2023, SSM - Population HealthCitation Excerpt :Indeed, earlier research has shown that loneliness is also linked to worse health in the FSU countries (Stickley et al., 2015a; Stickley et al., 2013). In light of these findings, determining the association between worry about crime and loneliness may have important implications for public policy, especially in the context of growing calls for public health and law enforcement to work more closely together (Van Dijk et al., 2019). Finally, by examining the worry about crime-loneliness association, this study will build on and extend an earlier study, which showed that worry about crime was associated with psychological distress in the FSU countries (Roberts et al., 2012).
Animal Agrocrime: An Overlooked Biological Threat
2023, Health SecurityChild sexual exploitation and the adoption of public health approaches to prevention: critical reflections on evolving processes and practices
2023, Crime Prevention and Community SafetyExamining Implementation of Crisis Centers on Police Officer Emergency Hold Petitions
2023, Community Mental Health JournalSocial Workers' Perspectives on Extreme Risk Protection Orders
2023, Social Work (United States)