Interprofessional collaboration in Criminal Justice Liaison and Diversion Schemes: An analysis of partnership practice in an English police custody suite.

Abstract

The roll-out of Criminal Justice Liaison and Diversion Schemes (CJLDS) by the National Health Service England (NHSE) was completed in 2020, yet little is known about how these schemes operate. The current model, which embeds CJLDS practitioners within police custody suites, has relied on establishing a series of partnerships between NHSE and local police force areas. This research aimed to explore if organisational practice culture(s) affects CJLDS objectives to identify detainees meeting all-vulnerabilities threshold criteria (NHS England 2019), and divert them out of the criminal system and into health and social services. Using an ethnographic, predominantly qualitative mixed methods approach, data were collected from semi-structured interviews with twenty police Desk Sergeants and CJLDS practitioners who share custody suite practice in a CJLDS locality partnership. Further data were collected during non-participant observations of shared practice in custody. The qualitative findings were supported by descriptive statistics of secondary quantitative data collected for monitoring and reporting by the CJLDS team. Key discursive themes were identified in the qualitative data, and Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) was used to expose the partnership dispositif. Foucault imbued the French word le dispositif, literally the apparatus of a mechanism, with his conceptualisation of power through discourse (Foucault 1980), and was used to describe the institutional practice culture of the CJLDS partnership. The research found the culture of Police Custody to be based on two discursive themes. The first, a discursive theme of custody as a carousel of repetitive attendance for established customers, and the second, where custody is a threatening environment for risky detainees. CJLDS practitioners are positioned within the custody suite, the site of shared practice, to verify and manage risky detainees perceived as vulnerable to self-harm or suicide. Le dispositif of police custody, and of the partnership, functions to safeguard professional reputations by reducing the risk of deaths associated with custody. The institutional practice culture found by the research shows that the partnership model influences the delivery of liaison and diversion services in England and recommends a strategic review of the policy.