‘It’s like I’m having an affair’: Cross-force police collaborations as complex problems

Financial austerity has brought considerable pressure upon policing services in England and Wales in the past decade. For the British government, one mitigatory vehicle to alleviate this pressure is the expansion of police collaborative units operating across two or more police forces. To date however, such cross-force collaborations have been beset by a series of problems and progress has been inexorably slow. Drawing upon the reflections of police officers and staff involved at varying stages of cross-force collaborations, this paper explores why collaborations have so far largely failed. The paper argues that while the challenges of cross-force collaborations echo those of previous police efforts to work with external partners, these difficulties are intensified during cross-force collaborations in which partners present divergent policing agendas. As such, cross-force collaborations may be usefully understood as ‘complex problems,’ marking them out as particularly challenging and demanding new and distinct approaches to problem-solving.