Abstract
The primary purpose of police-community liaison schemes is to build bridges or new relationships with communities that have experienced historically tense interactions with law enforcement. Overall, there is little consistency about police liaison schemes in practice. Research is not consistent throughout the field of policing about the impact of liaison schemes. This chapter provides an international critical outlook on police liaison. It moves from its initial, politically encouraged, necessity, to its utilisation in the management of hotspots in policing. As a conclusion, we propose that police liaison schemes remain a clever strategy for any police organisation that looks at facilitating conversations with vulnerable communities, albeit with serious limitations.
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Notes
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The Programme d’Intervention en milieu scolaire, was set up in 1987 as a programme to specifically address drug trafficking in schools around Québec City, Quebec, Canada.
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Asquith, N.L., Bartkowiak-Théron, I. (2021). Police Liaison. In: Policing Practices and Vulnerable People. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62870-3_8
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