Urban crime and negotiation attempts with a criminal to access the field: contact, engagement and a present.

Negotiating access to a field can be portrayed as relatively straightforward. When the researcher seeking access is a criminology practitioner and that access is being sought from a criminal, the process of attempting to build trust and rapport, especially when the opportunity to engage presents itself by chance, is complicated.This ethnographic account outlines the process of such an encounter, balancing accountability to profession whilst simultaneously seeking to operationalise the theoretical intertwining of the criminology practitioner and independent academic researcher status. The duality of these seemingly opposite roles of this specific encounter is contrasted by the creative opportunity of cultural criminology’s methodological approach of verstehen.Techniques of impression management to elicit a favourable response were fluid and evolving, recognising when one approach was failing and changing direction to pursue another. This approach needed to coexist and compliment the disposal of the criminological encounter from a practitioner control agent perspective. This was achieved by the use of discretion.Limited success was gained post interaction with a potential channel of communication elicited by a third party for possible access to the field, although there is no certainty of this.