In the previous chapter we described how in the neo-liberal, governed-at-a-distance, risk-managing state, police form communities of interest with other actors for crime control and crime prevention purposes. We defined third party policing as police efforts to persuade or coerce other non-offending parties such as health and building inspectors, housing agencies, property and business owners, parents and schools to take responsibility for preventing or reducing crime problems. We showed how third party policing is part of a transformation of governance generally, a shift from welfarism to neo-liberalism, directed at making individuals and groups within society more responsible for their own governance. In the transformed world of crime control, risk assessment and management has become the new primary goal of governance networks. These new networks require police to form partnerships with potential guardians to prevent or respond to criminal activity. As governments accept that crime is a problem to be curtailed and contained, rather than corrected, the police role moves increasingly from front-line patroller to facilitator, or information hub and risk assessor (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997) within the third party policing network.

In the following chapters we go on to describe these partnerships in detail, to evaluate how they work, and to examine their impact on both levels of criminal activity and police. But to examine only the role of police in third party policing is to examine only one side of the third party policing equation – the other parties to the partnerships and networks and their goals and motivations should also be considered.