Reflexive Academic–Practitioner Collaboration with the Police

Abstract

Reflexivity in the understanding and practice of research is not just something to be cultivated amongst researchers. Particularly as models of collaborative research develop—models which tend to already work with a reflexive understanding of research—there is a growing need to think about the reflexivity of the researched. This chapter characterises research as ultimately being about learning across the (recognised) boundaries of social worlds (the academy or, in this case, the police being distinctive social worlds). It will argue that reflexive practice on the part of social researchers, in that it challenges some of the myths about scientific social research, might itself play an important role in encouraging reflexivity on the part of practitioners (or ‘the researched’), and that reflexivity on the part of practitioners will encourage challenge of some of the myths about their practice, fostering a more realistic understanding and ownership of research that sees it not in narrow instrumental, credibility-enhancing terms, but as something relevant and to be learned from, even where—perhaps especially where—it is critical of extant practice. However, local demands of practice, external politics, and interests in maintaining public relations also make reflexive engagement with research a challenge.