University of Sheffield Project Studentship: ‘Responding to risk through police partnerships’

Police partnerships have been a growing trend, which has significantly impacted on police practices and on police studies. These partnerships involve a range of public, private, voluntary and non-profit agencies and organisations. Risk is also a concept of interest to academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Drawing on sociological conceptualisations of risk – as future oriented and global in character, and which challenge senses of security - policing scholars have argued, for example, that risk has re-oriented the nature of policing. Whilst for practitioners and policy-makers, the current zeitgeist is vulnerability, whether of detainees, victims or witnesses, who have been defined, for example, in terms of the risks associated with mental health problems, learning difficulties, physical illness or disability, alcohol and/or substance misuse, age and ethnicity. Therefore, the purpose of this PhD is to examine the form, extent and usefulness of police partnerships as a way of responding to risk. The PhD will focus on one of the following topics:
• Police partnerships responding to risks to children and young people
• Police partnerships and mental disorder
• Police partnerships and drug-related harms
• Risk, police partnerships and organisational change
The PhD will be undertaken over three years from September 2016. It will involve the collection of quantitative and/or qualitative data in at least two police forces, the development of a collaborative working relationship with South Yorkshire Police (SYP), as well as a series of knowledge exchange activities which might include research seminars, reports and a secondment to SYP.