Collaboration, Coordination, And Teambuilding

Collaboration and coordination are critical to the success of criminal justice and community revitalization projects, since so many agencies, communities, and individuals have a stake in these efforts. Through our strategic planning, facilitation, and training services, ILJ helps our clients successfully learn how to build strong relationships across disciplines and communities, and to coordinate their efforts for optimum success.

Past Projects

Coordination as a Sustainability Strategy

For the U.S. Department of Justice Community Capacity Development Office, ILJ developed and implemented a curriculum in selected U.S. Attorney districts to help Department of Justice-funded initiatives learn how to better coordinate and collaborate with each other. The two-day, highly interactive curriculum resulted in detailed action plans for increasing coordination in each district.

Online Training on Law Enforcement-Private Security Collaboration

With grant support from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), U. S. Department of Justice, ILJ developed a comprehensive, easily accessible electronic training curriculum for use by law enforcement and private security professionals. The basis for the curriculum is the report/guidelines, “Operation Partnership: Practices and Trends in Law Enforcement and Private Security Collaborations,” which ILJ and its partners produced under a separate COPS grant. The interactive training employs multimedia techniques to enhance learning, and will allow users to create customized action plans they can use to create partnerships in their jurisdictions or strengthen existing partnerships.

Operation Partnership

Working closely with national police and private security organizations, ILJ conducted Operation Partnership to examine law enforcement-private security partnerships throughout the nation. The project included a national survey of private security and law enforcement to identify partnerships; and in-depth interviews with more than 70 partnerships that shared information and resources, and that provide joint responses to address homeland security, public disorder, and other public safety issues. A comprehensive report will soon be published that includes numerous partnership examples, as well as guidelines for forming and strengthening law enforcement-private security partnerships. Operation Partnership was supported by the U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Operation Cooperation

Operation Cooperation, supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, examined partnerships between law enforcement and private security throughout the nation. The study resulted in a widely distributed report, Operation Cooperation: Guidelines for Partnerships Between Law Enforcement and Private Security Organizations; a literature review; case studies; and a video.

Cross-Site Evaluation of Locally Initiated Research Collaborations

Under sponsorship of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), 25 locally initiated partnerships between police departments and research institutions worked together to assess problem identification methods, data collection and analysis, research design, and use of results. ILJ received an award from NIJ to do a cross-site study, summarizing elements such as problems arising in the partnerships, acceptance of the research teams into the police organizations, on-site time invested by researchers, turnover of key personnel, and other factors affecting successful partnership work. ILJ also held cluster conferences and conducted electronic conferencing on specific police topics connected with the partnership research, such as domestic violence reduction, drug prevention, and computer mapping.

Sample Publications and Products

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