Law Enforcement and Public Health: Partners for Community Safety and Wellbeing

(Note that all chapters will feature case studies or vignette of approximately 500-750 words)

Foreword: Safety and security: the shared space of law enforcement and public health

Law enforcement and public health are alike in many ways. Both are traditional government services that in modern times have been shared between public and private delivery systems. Both claim preventive roles in relation to social harms but devote considerable resources to responding to harms that have already occurred. Both are practiced within and as expressions of professional cultures. Both can create as well as alleviate harm. They share, to a considerable degree, the same operating spaces as they address specific ills like drug overdose, violence, road safety, and mental illness, and deeper social determinants of health and security like poverty and inequality.

If we were organizing social services from scratch in 2021, we might well decide to organize law enforcement and public health services differently, but as things stand, the challenge is to consider how the two distinct projects can be better aligned for greater cooperation and effectiveness. The Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) Education Special Interest Group of the Global LEPH Association has initiated this collection of papers on the many and diverse facets of the LEPH intersection. In this preface, the authors briefly consider the evolution of the "LEPH" idea, its promise and limitations, and offer some thoughts about the state of the field today.

Preface: Conceptual and practice tensions in LEPH: Public health approaches to policing and police and public health collaborations

Isabelle Bartkowiak-Th廨on, James Clover, Denise Martin, Richard Southby, & Nick Crofts

The Editorial Team will draft the Preface once the content of the textbook has been reviewed in its entirety.

Chapter 1 - The historical public health and social work role of the police

Isabelle Bartkowiak-Th廨on, James Clover, Denise Martin, Richard Southby, & Nick Crofts

Drawing on the works of Maurice Punch, Egon Bittner, and others, this chapter provides a historical foundation to the interplay, or sometime the lack thereof, of law enforcement and health systems coordinating responses to protect and support people in the community. As described by Punch (2019, p. ix):

The notion of Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) as a specified field for academic attention and professional practice is relatively recent (Anderson and Burris: 2017). It could be argued, however, that the issue of the interaction between the two "systems" - albeit in different ways and forms - is not all that new and is, in fact, a perennial one which long predates the formation of modern agencies of law enforcement and public health.

This chapter also includes professional reflections from members of the Editorial team on their experience of the interplay, or lack thereof, between systems.

Chapter 2 - Crime reduction and community well-being through community mobilization and leadership

Norm Taylor, Cal Corley, Dale McFee & Matthew Torigian.

In this chapter, two police executives and two executive advisors collaborate to share their informed perspectives and to explore new forms of police leadership that have emerged over the past decade, leading to broad systemic changes in criminal justice and human services delivery across Canada.

Most of what Canadian police officers attend to daily has little to do with criminality. In fact, almost 74% of calls f