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ABSTRACT
The Scottish Crime Campus (SCC) represents a significant financial and political investment in policing organised crime and terrorism in Scotland. The ethos of physically co-locating high-policing agencies and promoting partnership working has been central to the SCC; however, the consequences for those agencies and actors not permanently based here have hitherto been overlooked. Based on mixed methods research this study considers the range of ‘outside’ partners who work with the core SCC-based agencies, and explores the consequences of these co-location arrangements for broader partnership working across this ‘new network’ of high policing. It finds that these 'outside' partners report a range of positive benefits from engaging with the SCC: from improvements in the quality and depth of partnership working to enhanced service delivery in their own work. The SCC has deepened collaboration between the crime campus-based agencies and those partners who directly participate, albeit in a more limited fashion, in these co-location arrangements. Partnership working with agencies fully ‘beyond’ the crime campus, however, is better characterised as co-operative, not collaborative. Extending collaboration further across this network would bring further benefits, but requires the addressing of boundary issues, including challenges of insularity and isolation, that can result from co-location.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This approach reflects the same principles for assessing the effectiveness of partnership working as developed by Diamond (Citation2006).
2 Reflecting the understandably opaque nature of much of the policing of terrorism and organised crime, and the ‘outsider’ status of the researcher, this list of agencies and actors was initially compiled by the SCC and forwarded to the researcher for subsequent dissemination of the survey instrument as deemed necessary. The researcher exercised control over the use, non-use, or supplementation of this list in this regard.
3 Adapting here the terminology previously used by Sheptycki (Citation2007b).
4 The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), based at the Security Service headquarters at Thames House in London, is an illustrative example in this area (see Gill and Phythian, Citation2006, p. 51–52). Additionally, the processes of the ‘regionalisation’ of the Security Service presence across the UK has highlighted the value of proximal co-location of agencies engaged in counter-terrorism work (see Manningham-Buller Citation2007, p. 44–45; Gregory Citation2007, p. 186–187; Northcott Citation2007, p. 470–471; Intelligence and Security Committee Citation2013, p. 12–13). Considering co-location between agencies primarily responsible for national security and those who respond to organised crime, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the NCA operate a co-located Joint Operations Cell, which focuses on tackling online child sexual exploitation (GCHQ, Citation2015).
5 Including those undertaken in Scotland (see HMICS, Citation2007).
6 To provide some additional context nine respondents reported that they now communicate less frequently with the core SCC agencies.
7 Police reform in Scotland involved the delivery of the provisions in the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, which amalgamated the eight territorial police forces in Scotland and specialist services of the Scottish Police Services Authority – including the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency – into a single national police force. The 2012 Act also created the Scottish Police Authority, which was created to maintain policing in Scotland hold the new national force to account.
8 It is important to recognise that whilst nine respondents disagreed with the statement that the quality of partnership working had improved following the implementation of the crime campus, this does not necessarily mean that the situation has regressed; simply that it has not improved.
9 A view that would be contrary to Brodeur’s view (Citation2007) that the distinction between high and low policing is increasingly relevant in the post-9/11 period.
10 This conclusion resonates with the work of Lambert and Parsons (Citation2017). Drawing upon both academic research in London and professional experience Lambert and Parsons recognise the competing demands between high and low policing, and the requirement to reconcile any tensions between such approaches in furtherance of community-based counter-terrorism policing.