A central part of contemporary police work is forging partnerships with individuals, groups and organizations in an effort to regulate, control and prevent crime (Sparrow, 2000). Police team up with property owners, building inspectors, environmental regulators, education department representatives, community groups, insurance companies, business leaders, local government personnel and anyone else who is motivated and able to work with police. But what happens when police co-opt and coerce organizations and/or individuals to help the police pursue their crime control and crime prevention functions? What happens when organizations and/or individuals are unmotivated or unwilling to go outside of their routine activities to take on a crime control or crime prevention responsibility? In our caravan park example described in Chapter 1, the park manager was unmotivated to deal with the multitude of problems stemming from his caravan park. It was not until the police found a “lever” (in this case the “lever” was a local council regulation and an insurance policy) – to “motivate” the park manager (a “third party”) into altering his practices. This process of using legal levers to regulate, co-opt and coerce third parties is central to what we describe as “third party policing” (see also Buerger and Mazerolle, 1998: 301).

Third party policing exists in many forms. In about 30 percent of all third party policing initiatives, the police use coercion or persuasion of third parties to solve ongoing problems within the context of their problem-oriented policing program.