Routinising Police-Security Collaborations: A Prospective, Mixed-Methods Experiment in British Train Stations

Abstract

Interagency cooperation may increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness in an era of resource austerity and increased workload for both the police and their partners. Yet the effect of a strategic police-security collaboration on routine operations across multiple sites is unknown. In a controlled experiment, we introduced an interagency collaboration between state and non-state guardianships to train stations across England. A mixed-methods approach, with multiple crime indicators and a survey administered with police officers and security partners, was applied through a series of before-and-after comparisons with staggered start dates to control for confounding variables. Crime recording, police proactivity and crisis intervention increased compared to controls. Security staff and officers valued collaboration and saw it as beneficial and efficient. The findings support police-private-security collaboration on crime and disorder, but more research with larger and more diverse samples and stricter control over rival explanations is needed.