Collaboration between law enforcement and the social sciences.

Discusses the advantages of collaboration between social psychological researchers and law enforcement officers. Collaboration is distinguished from passive cooperation, and the importance of an effective practitioner-researcher coupling mechanism is noted. An example of this type of collaboration, involving the identification of 3rd-party intervention approaches used by police officers when dealing with interpersonal conflicts, is described. Both law enforcement and social science are seen as directly affecting public security. Implications for collaboration between the 2 systems are drawn as they extend to society as a whole. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)