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Collaborative Discourse: The Case of Police andSocial Work Relationships in Intimate ViolenceIntervention in IsraelEli Buchbinder a & Zvi Eisikovits ba School of Social Work, The Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences , Universityof Haifa , Israelb The Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies and director, The Center for theStudy of Society , University of Haifa , IsraelPublished online: 11 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Eli Buchbinder & Zvi Eisikovits (2008) Collaborative Discourse: The Case of Police and SocialWork Relationships in Intimate Violence Intervention in Israel, Journal of Social Service Research, 34:4, 1-13, DOI:10.1080/01488370802162251

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Collaborative Discourse: The Case of Police and SocialWork Relationships in Intimate Violence Intervention

in Israel

Eli BuchbinderZvi Eisikovits

ABSTRACT. In addition to the institutionalization of violence against women as a social problemin Israel, there has been increased public and professional pressure on both police and social welfareservices to collaborate in order to enhance effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to examineperceptions of collaboration modalities by police and social work personnel. This study is based ondata collected for a larger nationwide police evaluation study. The information of the present research isbased on in-depth interviews with 25 key informants from both police and social services that specializedin domestic violence. They were middle managers and/or policy makers. The analysis of the discourseof both groups pointed to contradictions and paradoxes resulting from the acknowledgment of theneed for partnership on the prescriptive level and the actual lack of this on the descriptive level ofday-to-day practices. Four recurring themes were identified from the analysis: (1) struggle over whoowns the solution and avoiding responsibility and the power to intervene; (2) boundary preservationwork; (3) estrangement of the other organization; and (4) collaboration maintained on the interpersonalrather than the institutional level. The findings are discussed based on the assumption that throughlanguage, professionals construct the situated meaning of their professional-organizational policy andtheir ideological and professional culture, which prescribes collaboration without necessarily actingon it.

KEYWORDS. Interorganizational collaboration; domestic violence; social worker–police interaction.

With the transformation of violence againstwoman from a personal and interpersonal prob-lem to a social problem in Israel, like other West-ern countries, there is growing expectation forcollaborative efforts between social service andlaw enforcement agencies to combat the problemand to overcome professional and other hostilebarriers (Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Kelly, 2003;Knox & Roberts, 2002; Mullender, 1996; Weisz,

Eli Buchbinder is senior lecturer at the School of Social Work, The Faculty of Social Welfare and HealthSciences, University of Haifa, Israel. Zvi Eisikovits is professor of social work, The Faculty of Social Welfareand Health Studies and director, The Center for the Study of Society, University of Haifa, Israel.

Address correspondence to: Eli Buchbinder, PhD, senior lecturer, School of Social Work, The Facultyof Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905 Israel. E-mail:ebuchbin@research.haifa.ac.il.

1999). Overall, such collaborative efforts havetwo major purposes: to convey an unambigu-ous and strong social message concerning theintolerance of intimate violence and to achieveeffective intervention and control, overcomingthe fragmentation of services and responding toa range of clients’ needs (Corcoran, Stephenson,Perryman, & Allen, 2001; Lewis et al., 2000;Liu, 2004; Pence, 1999). Such integration can

Journal of Social Service Research, Vol. 34(4) 2008Available online at http://www.haworthpress.comC© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

doi: 10.1080/01488370802162251 1

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be accomplished along a continuum of modelsranging from control to compassion. In a control-oriented model the focus is on measures aimedat criminalizing domestic violence. By contrast,in a compassion-oriented model, the prevailingbelief is that intervention in domestic violenceshould focus on therapeutically oriented socialand individual measures (Gelles, 1997; Mederer& Gelles, 1989). Despite such efforts, these orga-nizations work largely in isolation and are gener-ally committed to their own organizational pro-cedures, ideologies, and values. The objectiveof the present study is to describe and analyzethe emerging discourse concerning collaborationbetween social services and police about domes-tic violence.

The police play a critical role because theyserve as gatekeeper for the entire criminal jus-tice system, provide important legal and personalservices to victims, and refer them to social,medical, and legal services (e.g., Bowker, 1983;Carlson, 1984; Cho & Wilke, 2005; Heise, 1998;Smith, 1989). Research has shown that batteredwomen do not perceive police intervention aseffective (e.g., Avakame & Fyfe, 2001; Buzawa& Buzawa, 1993; Gordon, 1996; McGee, 2000).Consequently, efforts have been focused on in-ducing systemic change in police organizationsin both Israel (Eisikovits & Buchbinder, 2000)and the United States (e.g., Cho & Wilke, 2005;Edleson & Tolman, 1992; Gelles, 1993). Twoimportant interrelated areas were identified asbeing in need of change: (1) defining intimateviolence as a crime and as an expression of it,(2) the mandatory arrest of perpetrators (e.g.,Cho & Wilke, 2005; Stark, 1993). It was as-sumed that these changes would deter batter-ers (Jaffe, Hastings, Reitzel, & Austin, 1993).There is evidence that passing new laws orregulations does not guarantee their implemen-tation or changes in the modus operandi oflaw enforcement organizations (Jacobson &Gottman, 1998). Police handle most complaintsof intimate violence as misdemeanors, makingmandatory arrest policies difficult to implement(Hutchison, Hirschel, & Pesackis, 1994). It wasfurther shown that mandatory arrest is not aguaranteed deterrent for perpetrators as manyhad hoped after the initial Minneapolis experi-ment (Davis & Smith, 1995; Garner & Maxwell,

2000; Sherman & Berk, 1984). The MinneapolisDomestic Violence field experiment study ma-nipulated police interventions in domestic abusecases, by randomly assigning overnight arrest,sending the abuser away for eight hours, or ad-vising and mediating the dispute. The originalresults supported the effectiveness of overnightarrest, which led to major changes in arrest pol-icy over the country, on the one hand, and gaverise to several sources of criticism on the otherhand. With changes in the social climate re-garding intimate partner violence collaborationbetween social services and police became anecessity (e.g., James-Hanman, 2001).

Interprofessional collaboration is an interper-sonal, interdependent processes by which mem-bers of different disciplines act from a col-lective ownership orientation and arrangement,which contribute to achieving shared, compati-ble goals that cannot be reached by each pro-fession separately (Berg-Weger & Schneider,1998; Bronstein, 2003; Graham & Barter, 1999;Longoria, 2005). Interdisciplinary collaborationreflects the growing awareness in different pro-fessional organizations that clients are betterand more effectively helped when profession-als work together (Beatrice, 1990; Bronstein,2003; Reitan, 1998; Waldfogel, 1997). In crimeprevention this requires recognition of the inter-dependency between legal–criminal and social-intervention oriented institutions in general, andpolice and social work in particular (e.g., Danis,2003; Slaght, 2002). The fundamental similar-ity between police and social workers is thatthey are both reactive toward people in needand thus fulfill an important social service func-tion. But there are significant differences in themeaning and centrality of the social service tasksin the everyday operation of these agencies,their professional ideology, their working cul-ture, the nature of their relationship with clients,and the outcomes by which success is measured(Holdaway, 1986). Given their divergent andconflicting socialz concerns, purposes, and func-tions, these organizations often hold negativeand stereotypical conceptions toward each other.Social workers often view police as too puni-tive and disapprove of their use of force; policeview social workers as weak, incompetent do-gooders who are unavailable when needed and as

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such a threat to police work (Holmes, 1981; Of-fer, 1999). Work in the area of violence againstwomen produces many gray areas by blurringthe lines between therapeutic and social controlfunctions (Goldner, 1992). Under such condi-tions, the identity of each profession is threat-ened by some of the functions attributed cus-tomarily to the other. Control and treatment areonly two of these functions (Holdaway, 1986).

Interdisciplinary collaboration may be af-fected by professional identity, role and culture,structural-organizational characteristics, sharedgoals, personal characteristics, interpersonal re-lationships, and previous history of collabora-tion (Alter & Hage, 1993; Bronstein, 2003; Raw-son, 1994; Scott, 2005). Therefore, interagencycollaboration poses challenges in identifying ajoint language, identifying terminological dif-ferences, and developing a shared informationbase. These challenges lead to diverging pri-orities and strategic plans, competition for re-sources, and difficulties in sharing them (e.g.,Hornby & Atkins, 2000; Rawson, 1994).

METHOD

The present study is part of an extensive Is-raeli national study to evaluate police interven-tion in the area of family violence, which hada quantitative component described elsewhere(Buchbinder & Eisikovits, 2004) and a qualita-tive one based on in-depth interviews with keyinformants from both the police and social ser-vices working in these agencies in middle man-agerial or in policy making positions.

The study drew a purposive sample of 25 in-terviews, deliberately selected out of 35 inter-views with key respondents within the policeforce and within the social welfare system work-ing with police in the domain of violence againstwomen. Participants comprised a sample basedon police identification of important officers andsocial workers with whom they have profes-sional relationships, the researcher’s knowledgeabout individual professionals involved in thiswork, and recommendations from managers inthe welfare system. The 25 interviews of policeofficers and social workers contained the rich-est material on the general topic of police col-

laboration with social welfare services. In thisstudy there were 13 police officers and 12 socialworkers; 15 women and 10 men. All participantswere between the ages of 35 and 52. The levelof education of police personnel was mostly un-dergraduate degrees in various social sciences(sociology, criminology, political science, etc.);all social workers held a graduate degree in so-cial work and had experience in child welfare,public welfare, probation, and community work.Police personnel worked previously in traffic, in-vestigation, juvenile police work, and drug en-forcement.

The sample included key informants posi-tioned in their systems at various levels in amanner that made them both influential andknowledgeable about interagency collaborationon both the local and national levels. Thus, thesample was political in addition to being purpo-sive (Patton, 2002). Informants also representedthe widest possible variation of interagency en-counters. In this type of sampling procedure, rep-resentativeness and generalizability are of lesserconcern. The aim of the study was to capture at-tributed meaning about collaboration in its depth(Creswell, 1998).

The interview guide included a series of is-sues regarding the perception of intimate vio-lence, the influence of policy in each organiza-tion, models and ways of police and social workintervention, and each profession’s evaluationof success and failures in coping with intimateviolence. The interviews lasted about 2 hoursand were tape recorded and transcribed literally.Content analysis was performed using discourseanalysis as a guiding orientation (Gill, 2000).The method is based on the linguistic turn inthe field of social sciences, which assumes thatsocial reality is experienced through language(Healy, 2000). People do not simply react to so-cial environments; they interpret, choose, and actbased on different linguistic social meanings. Asa result of this process the protagonists priori-tize some versions of reality and exclude otherrival versions in the construction process. Dis-course in this sense is carried out from a social-ideological position of “shared others” in thecommunity who may be part of the discourse.Organizational discourse is, therefore, seen asan active, interpretive, dialectical, and reflective

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process of representing the world as a raisond’etre in itself in the context of relationshipswith others organizations. As such, the variousforms of discourse can be seen as a capsule oflimitations and possibilities in which organiza-tions collaborate.

Discourse analysis is built on the understand-ings of the interpretive repertoires organizingcontent (Potter & Wetherell, 1995), and occursboth on the micro level (individuals) and themacro level (organizations, culture, and politi-cal contexts). Discourse analysis is a dualisticendeavor: first, it aims to recover the interpre-tations actors give to their practices; second, itexamines the rhetorical organization of linguis-tic resources such as categories, narratives, andmetaphors to uncover the underlying meaningsof social practices that are partially concealedor taken for granted by the actors (Gill, 2000;Healy, 2000; Potter & Wetherell, 1995).

In our case, discourse analysis helps clarifythe ways in which language constructs and nego-tiates meaning (and therefore knowledge) con-cerning intervention modalities in social workorganizations (Rodger, 1991).

The data collected were content analyzed us-ing cross-case analysis (Rubin & Rubin, 2005).After an initial process of deconstruction of in-dividual perceptions of collaboration, we col-lected and reduced instances, and identified andcoded core themes and patterns (Gill, 2000;Potter & Wetherell, 1995; Shkedi, 2005). Thecore themes were then reordered conceptuallyand placed back in the context derived fromthe larger interviews about interagency collab-oration. This made possible both analysis andintegration of large amounts of data and thegeneration of abstractions and interpretations.The aim in qualitative analysis is to achievecredibility and integrity. Unlike in quantitativeresearch, where validity equals truth (Angen,2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), and without argu-ing that a complete version of the truth has beenachieved, discourse analysis claims that there isno norm of objectivity on which the researcherand the reader can both rely for a scientific justifi-cation (Gill, 2000). Thus, emphasis moves froma definitive version of reality to a process of in-tersubjective validation between researchers andreaders (Angen, 2000).

RESULTS

The unifying theme of the issue of collabora-tion related to the gap between the prescriptiveand the descriptive level of what is called col-laboration. On the prescriptive level there was akeen sense of the need to collaborate and recog-nition of the importance of such collaboration.Several recurring themes that hampered suchcollaboration were identified: (1) struggle overwho owns the solution and avoiding responsi-bility and the power to intervene; (2) boundarypreservation work; (3) estrangement from theother organization; and (4) collaboration main-tained at the interpersonal rather than the insti-tutional level.

Struggle Over Who Owns the Solution:Avoiding Responsibility and the Power toIntervene

Interviews with representatives from each or-ganization believed that although they needed toimprove their respective skills and procedures,the actual power and social responsibility to actlay in the hands of the other organization. Onesenior police official described the place of thepolice in the overall picture of dealing with inti-mate violence as follows.

The police are the front line. Everybodycomes to the police, this is the first placethey all go, but the true intervention andtreatment is not in the hands of police. . . .Police intervention in the battering ofwomen is like using aspirin for severe in-fections. I can give immediate help, per-haps stop the violence, pick him up andarrest him, defend the woman by takingher out of there . . . and perhaps do short-term intervention concerning the violenceitself. It’s just aspirin, to lower the fever.But don’t expect this aspirin to cure the in-fection. For this you need the workshops,the treatment of the social agencies.

This quote illustrates the perception of po-lice that their ability to intervene in vio-lence against woman is limited and temporaryand, therefore, public expectations from police

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intervention should be limited. The recurringtheme in the interviews with police officials wasthat police could handle only the outcomes ofviolence and not its social and psychologicalcauses, and, therefore, the expectation that po-lice work can either stop or prevent violence isunrealistic.

In the perception of social workers the prob-lem is that police indiscriminately transfer theentire responsibility for violent clients to so-cial services even in the most difficult and se-vere cases. The underlying attitude of police asexperienced by social workers is motivated bythe need to keep a clean desk, which results inthe unidirectional transfer of clients. There isan overall sense of one-sidedness among socialworkers, leading to a feeling of powerlessnessvis-a-vis a “client provider” whose main con-cern is to place the clientele on a one-way road.The resulting sense of loneliness is colored byfear of responsibility, fear of failure, and even-tually a critical and hostile attitude toward theother organization.

In parallel, social service providers expressthe view that the responsibility and the powerto stop violence are with the police. This atti-tude is supported by the belief that police ownthe “client pool ” and that they refer to socialservices. But the police have the authority andlegal clout to work with perpetrators, and theycan use power and authority with a populationthat understands no other language. The latentmessage is that when police officers do not usetheir authority and power-based style they failto do their job. A conceptual role reversal takesplace in the process of transferring responsibil-ity. While the police are expected to be a sym-bol of control and power, they become an advo-cate of care and social intervention; at the sametime, the social agencies that are expected to careand intervene become advocates for the use ofpower and control. The discourse also changesto accommodate the other, at least on the sur-face, but there is a noticeable tendency to re-treat into stereotypical thinking and rigid percep-tions of the other based on previous images thatdid not change with the rhetoric. For instance,a senior official from a social welfare organi-zation stated her opinion about the way policeshould operate.

I don’t want these general ideas of collabo-ration that can be interpreted either way. Asyou know, we are talking here about a com-plex social phenomenon, highly complexand broad, involving personal and emo-tional attitudes. I want them [police] tohave clear-cut instructions so that the po-liceman can open a menu and know how toact specifically when encountering a bat-tered woman or a batterer, after having hadall the training and supervision that wouldenable him to talk to her or to him.

Underlying these words is a subtext that main-tains the classical stereotypes and suspicions so-cial workers often hold toward police person-nel, namely that police officers need concreteinstructions handed down to them in the formof menus that allow for no personal judgmentor interpretation. This ensures exclusion of theirattitudes, assumed to be negative, which havea negative impact on their professional behav-ior. Clearly, collaboration based on such a per-spective of the other is difficult to envision. Itis a relationship permeated by lack of trust anddouble messages that assert simultaneously theneed to collaborate and the impossibility to doso. This conditional acceptance of the other isanother strategy of placing the responsibility forthe failure to collaborate on the other.

Boundary Preservation Work

Interagency collaboration can be arrangedalong a continuum from minimalist to maxi-malist approaches. The minimalist approach in-volves the exchange of basic information in ahighly formalized manner with little if any in-terpersonal exchange and without any commit-ment to the idea of collaboration. The maximal-ist mode is characterized by a keen attempt tointegrate activities based on long-term involve-ment around specific tasks and concrete phasesof problem solving. In this type of collabora-tion, a multidisciplinary team approach emergesaround a joint vision and a common agenda.Our study found that boundary preservation de-velops in an environment that fosters minimalistcollaboration, where any upgrading of the pat-tern occurs only around individual cases. The

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director of a social service agency described herperception of desirable collaboration. Her wordsreflect what is currently missing.

We really need to understand that they area different system and we are a differentsystem. We need to mutually respect eachother’s work, as we don’t do the same kindof stuff. There is a need to know the dif-ferences, the role division, and accept thatwe have very different mentality, differentpolicies, and they have their own mentalityand policies. But we need to keep talkingso that everyone can explain their own po-sition and perhaps we can come to a com-promise.

The use of systems terminology and the em-phasis on the differences makes collaborationdifficult. The mere size of a “system” limitseasy access and handling of entities that are bothvague and too large to understand or handle. Ref-erences to the different mentality and differentpolicy are reiterated throughout the discoursealmost as an incantation, emphasizing the dis-similarities and how deep-rooted they are. Thus,collaboration equals compromise and anythingelse is mission (nearly) impossible. The use ofthese terms helps the interviewee set the bound-aries of his or her world by linguistic means.The ensuing perception of collaboration is min-imalist; it must be carried out carefully, withinclear boundaries. The attitude is one of avoid-ance, and the suggested mutual acquaintance isintended to maintain a safe distance, avoid con-flicts, and preserve boundaries.

Another aspect of boundary work in organiza-tions that acts against collaboration comes fromintraorganizational tension arising from conflict-ing ideologies. For instance, we often foundwithin the police a conflict between social ac-tion and a legalistic-bureaucratic orientation. Asenior police official who attempted to inducechange toward collaboration was forced to stopbecause of allegations that he broke police rulesand regulations concerning the relationship be-tween police and outside organizations. He said:

There is no doubt that a community-basedsystemic-level collaboration is threatening

the dominance of legalistically orientedparts of the police organization, and there-fore they are likely to react conservatively.As in any organization that is undergo-ing change, the most conservative parts arethose who attempt to stop the process.

Collaborative attempts within police depart-ments are identified with progressive forces thatwork toward opening up the boundaries of theorganization. At the same time those opposingsuch collaboration are identified with forces thatfear and oppose change. While there was no op-position to collaboration as a concept, the con-servative forces want to keep it minimal in orderto retain control over the flow of informationand relationships and thereby avoid the risk ofpolice exceeding their restrictive social mandateas defined by law.

An additional way of assessing the level ofcollaboration is by differentiating between co-ordinating consumption and coordinating provi-sion. The former refers to collaboration amonglower-level practitioners and field workers re-garding clients and their problems; the latterrefers to collaboration among higher-level of-ficials and policy-related activities. Consump-tion and provision work both autonomously andinteractively. The following quotation from aninterview with a director of a specialized servicefor battered women illustrates a low-level col-laboration characterized by everyday separationand occasional convergence around specifics.

I know that [a senior policy-level police of-ficial] opposes involvement of police withsocial services. She maintains that eachagency should do its own work and collab-orate as much as needed around specificcases. The truth is that they really don’t dotheir work as they should, particularly innonconventional cases involving a batteredwoman and a wild batterer. In cases of mu-tual violence, for instance, or when there isdivorce involved. I would like to see moreinvolvement with us in these cases.

This collaborative discourse keeps the dis-tance necessary for maintaining clear-cut bound-aries. Within a framework of ongoing separation

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protagonists are called in to examine anew thequestion of collaboration for each individualcase. Under such conditions, even when collab-oration becomes necessary, it scarcely happensbecause of the built-in doubt concerning its exis-tence. Collaboration implies a certain degree ofmutual boundary openness. When the concernis mainly with boundaries, those who are ex-pected to collaborate question the very idea ofcollaboration.

Estrangement

Collaboration can also be hampered by defin-ing the other organization as a “stranger.” Un-derstanding the other organization is critical forthe process of developing partnerships; it is animportant component of each organization’s ori-entation toward the other, and helps determinethe extent to which organizations are willing tomake their boundaries permeable to each other.Our interviews clearly showed that neither socialservice nor police organizations were knowl-edgeable about the professional culture, valuesystem, and practice realities of the other agency.An administrator of a social service agency said:

I know almost nothing about how policework is done. I know nothing about inves-tigation procedures, I know nothing aboutthe legal authority they have, I know noth-ing about the atmosphere of the investiga-tion, and almost nothing about the wholepolice work . . . That’s the truth. I thinkthat just as they know nothing about us, Iknow nothing about them. It could be thatsometimes we have completely unrealisticexpectations from police work and we arefrustrated. Perhaps if we had known wewouldn’t expect them to work in a certainway and this would avoid many frictions.

Interviews revealed that social service per-sonnel know little about the relevant laws, po-lice regulations and procedures, decision mak-ing processes, and courses the police followin processing clients and carrying out arrests.They have little understanding of the basic con-cepts and organizational culture underlying po-lice work. They have no knowledge of the ranks

and internal role divisions within police organi-zations; they knew by name but not by functionthe persons handling intimate violence, and hadeven less understanding of other functions in theorganizational structure that may affect policework with intimate violence. In general, socialworkers who worked with perpetrators or sur-vivors of violence tend not to become involvedin the police investigation except when batteredwomen complain about police handling. In suchcases, their lack of understanding of the pro-cess and outcome of police work in intimate vi-olence quickly becomes apparent. One of themost blatant expressions of this was the unreal-istic expectations developed concerning the lim-itations of power related to the investigation andarrest of batterers. Subsequently, these unmetexpectations led to friction, dissatisfaction, andoverall disenchantment, followed by the need torepair the relationship. Thus, collaboration wasoften replaced by a constant process of mendingfences. Mutual feelings of this nature betweenthe organizations create a vicious circle and asense of stalemate.

A similar sense of “strangeness,” experiencedby police toward social service workers, was ex-pressed by a senior police official.

I know there are these workshops. Some-times they bring the woman and the mantogether; they bring all kind of couples Ibelieve . . . I talk out of general knowledgeI have on this . . . I read in the newspa-pers about all kind of workshops that dealwith addiction to violence, to cigarettes, todrugs. Yes, this is addiction to violence.

[Question:] Would you want to know more?[Answer:] No, I don’t want to know more.

I am flooded with information on the things Ineed to do, that I say I don’t need any morethings that are not strictly related to my work. . . I as police cannot handle his [the perpe-trator’s] motives so we need to have combinedintervention between law enforcement and whatis called workshops, etc. I keep hearing that theseworkshops don’t help. At first we were told thatresearch shows that we need to do strict law en-forcement combined with workshops, but now

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we hear it doesn’t help. Who knows, things arepretty fluid in this field.

It is clear from this quote that the knowledgeavailable to police personnel of what social ser-vices can provide is superficial and nebulous.The repeated use of the metaphor “workshop”emphasizes a limited perception of what so-cial services should or can do and a lack ofknowledge and understanding of the broad socialmandate and policies of social service agencies.Social service activities are highly stereotyped.Use of the term “addiction to violence” illus-trates that intimate violence is perceived in termsknown and familiar to police working with ad-dicts and delinquents, and specific knowledge ofthe dynamics of intimate violence is neither ex-istent nor desirable. The superficial understand-ing of this senior official is underscored by thefact that he bases his knowledge on rumors asto what does or doesn’t work. Moreover, infor-mation about what does and doesn’t work is di-chotomous and often contradictory. This sim-plistic either–or paradigm, and the emphasis onoutcome without regard to process, widen thegap between social service and police culture.

Interpersonal Rather Than InstitutionalCollaboration

Because there were neither legal nor detailedprocedural directives defining the relationshipbetween police and social services, most of thecollaboration between representatives of theseagencies was carried out on an interpersonal,ad hoc basis. An administrator of a domesticviolence agency said:

When we started we had problems withcollaboration. They didn’t even knowwhether or not they were allowed to workwith us. Then it came down to the factthat any collaboration depends on the per-sonal policy of the local police chief. Ifhe believed that there should be collabora-tion, and had established connections andthe treatment stuff was really important tohim, he would find a way to bend rules andregulations and do it. He wouldn’t bendthe law but he would find all the loopholes

that would allow him to give us names andreferrals.

In time, social workers realized that despitetheir knowledge of police as a rigidly structured,formal, and highly hierarchical organizationwith a clear chain of command and instructionscoming from top down, they can work togetheronly based on local, informal, ad hoc connec-tions and interpersonal arrangements. Such ar-rangements are often effective in the short termbut create a sense of transience and depen-dence on specific interpersonal constellations.This personalization makes workers dependenton relationships and idiosyncratic values, knowl-edge, and attitudes that become the key shapersof priorities and policies in their organizations.The emerging working patterns are based on mu-tual persuasion rather than recognition of theimportance of the topic at hand. Most coopera-tive arrangements achieved in this way are un-stable and person dependent. A culture of “ne-gotiated truth” emerges in which everything isrelationship rather than rule bound. When rulesare systematically bent and renegotiated, mostof the professional effort is directed toward cir-cumventing the rules rather than performing theprofessional work. A local domestic violence ad-ministrator in a large municipal area describedthe negative impact of personnel changes in thepolice department on the evolving relationshipwith her agency.

There is more mix-up and confusion thanpolicy . . . I already had the feeling thatwe are going toward a model of great col-laboration. But now this is not the way itlooks. Perhaps I got tired having to dealwith all the personnel changes they gothrough. You meet with someone and havean agreement, and in a couple of days youhave someone else sitting there and theregoes the agreement. You decide on a pol-icy, which than changes together with theperson who switched jobs. You must bethere every day.

The two themes emerging from this quota-tion are instability and burnout. The relation-ship is constantly renegotiated, but rather than

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advancing existing arrangements it becomesSisyphean in that it periodically restarts fromscratch. Furthermore, the maintenance of in-terpersonal relationships becomes an end goalrather than a means to get the job done. The em-phasis on persons rather than institutionalizedarrangements was clear from the police perspec-tive as well. One police officer answered a ques-tion about what affects the quality of the relation-ship between police and social service workersas follows.

First of all, it all depends on who are thepeople involved. . . . That is, it all dependson the professional perceptions of the localpolice chief and the director of the domes-tic violence agency, to what extent peopleperceive their work as two sides of the samecoin.

To understand this quotation one must bear inmind the way in which intimate violence is per-ceived to be different from other violent crimes.It is known that the rules and regulations re-lated to all violent crimes become negotiable forintimate violence in terms of framing the prob-lem in the context of its severity and the needto react to it. It would be difficult to imaginea similar type of person-based orientation con-cerning other kinds of violent offenses for whichpolice reaction is grounded in rules and regula-tions prescribed by law. Within this vacuum offormal arrangements, both sides avoid system-atic action. When there is any action, it is basedon informal decisions and interpersonal connec-tions. A senior national official in the welfaresystem said:

The topic of predicting dangerousness isreally neglected by both intervention agen-cies and police because the social servicesrefuse to deal with prediction and they areafraid of it. They also say that there is noway to predict. The police have no profes-sional ability or skill to do it, so the policeofficer should ask us for help. But we areentitled neither by law nor by rules or reg-ulations to provide such information to po-lice. Social services provide professionalopinions to police on the topic of danger-

ousness and predictions of rehabilitationpotential, but this is done on the basis ofknowing personally someone they want tocontinue to work with. If there were regu-lations, it would be of great help to police.They would get out a lot from it and wewould too.

This senior official had both the authority andthe motivation to initiate change in the collabora-tion about predicting dangerousness, but in theabsence of clear organizational directives, theworkers’ fear and beliefs about prediction pre-vail and they refrain from official action. More-over, the lack of any organizational frameworkfor collaboration places individual collaborativeexchanges into the gray area of ethical or legalinfringements. Under these conditions, any spe-cific initiatives become subversive and are risktaking rather than risk lowering. Such activitycannot be overtly presented, its visibility mustbe kept low and no organizational rewards ap-ply to it. Whether such activity takes place atall is, therefore, a function of whether there areindividuals willing to risk doing it.

DISCUSSION

The literature on interprofessional collabora-tion maintains that if done properly such activitycan be an effective tool for intervention and pre-vention, but when this is not the case it can harmthe intervention process (James-Hanman, 2001;Longoria, 2005; Murphy, Musser, & Maton,1998; Silver, 2006). This article examined thecollaborative discourse between police and so-cial workers around violence against women.

Despite both organizations being equipped tohelp and protect marginal and distressed popu-lations, their collaboration is neither institution-alized nor smooth. There is still mutual distrustbetween these professional groups, which of-ten leads to framing the presenting problems interms of conflict of interest and power struggle.Given the different cognitive maps, professionalculture, ideology, and modus operandi of thesegroups, collaboration between police and socialwork agencies on anything is problematic (Bar-On, 1995). Given that intimate violence requires

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10 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH

complex and multiagency solutions, the need todevelop a framework for collaboration betweensocial services and police is long overdue. Theneed for collaboration was broadly recognized(Kelly, 2003). Such collaborative discourse doesnot take place in a vacuum but rather in thecontext of two professional cultures divergentin their behaviors and beliefs. This creates asociopolitical context in which participants onboth sides make politically correct statementsabout their good intentions and willingness toconsider interagency collaboration, but the re-sulting activity is little more than adjustmentsat the margin to accommodate the other. Theresulting gap between the prescriptive and de-scriptive levels of collaboration is manifest in therhetoric that defends the position of each side.Roles and expectations remain unclear, and con-flict regarding who should do what remains andfeeds the practice of deflecting responsibility. Insome cases the discourses perform as comple-mentary schismogenesis (Bateson, 1979), a termthat refers here to the mutual perpetuation ofdistancing leading to the definition of the col-laborative partner as the “other.”

The present study found that the gap betweenprofessionals is not haphazard or superficial butrepresents deeply rooted perceptions and under-standings of the problem. As James-Hanman(2001) pointed out, the most difficult of allthe problems in dealing with domestic violencework is developing a shared philosophy amongthose involved. The discourses described in thisarticle reiterated the tension between treatmentand criminalization, inherent in the interventionin family violence, which creates the seeminglyunbridgeable ideological rift between “treaters”and “punishers” (Bourne, 1990). The discoursereveals that both sides believe that the solutionlies with each advocating an ideology oppositeto its publicly recognized image: Police movedrecently to advocate for an increasingly thera-peutic orientation while social workers movedtoward a more punitive and legalistic position. Itis unclear whether this is a sign of flexibility andopenness or one of loss of direction and an in-tention to eschew responsibility. What is clear isthat both organizations and professional groupsshow signs of discomfort in the face of the newexpectations. The police remain largely a group

of people with a social mandate to identify crim-inals and bring them to justice, and they findthemselves in the position of helping victims, aclientele that is greatly different from what theywere trained to deal with. Social workers, whosespecial mandate and professional ideology is totreat people based on empathy and empower-ment, find themselves advocating for enforce-ment, involuntary intervention, and undue useof power.

Working outside one’s professional and ideo-logical turf creates great distress and emotionalupheaval, which each group handles by creatingemotional distance from the other to achieve atleast an appearance of safety. This may accountfor the “otherness” in the mutual definitions ofthese occupations. As Holdaway (1986) pointedout, both the police and social workers tend

To define their role in unrealistic terms,choosing to inhabit a world of false cer-tainties rather than one of shared uncer-tainties about the impact they make uponchange and order within our society. Thisis not to argue that either organization isimpotent, wholly unable to work towardsthe objectives they have accepted and setthemselves. Rather, it is to suggest that thehostility and suspicion between the field-workers of both services may be based ona false ambition and false strength ratheron acknowledgement of shared limitationand weakness. (pp. 153–154).

Professional boundaries are known to be es-sential not only for defining identity and mark-ing the specialized services of each professionalgroup but also for creating obstacles to interorga-nizational cooperation (Hornby & Atkins, 2000;Longoria, 2005; Scott, 2005). Our data showthat both organizations have a great deal of dif-ficulty opening boundaries. Social workers’ dis-course reflects their doubts as to the ability ofthe police to act professionally and to act aspartners in intervening in intimate violence. Thepolice are highly protective of their boundaries;they believe neither in transparency nor in openboundaries and view secrecy as a prerequisitefor successful police work. Social workers re-main strangers to them and need to be handled

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Buchbinder and Eisikovits 11

carefully. This may account for the fact that in-terprofessional collaboration can emerge onlyat the interpersonal rather than organizationallevel. One may trust an individual but not anofficial member of a professional group.

In our search for commonalities between thetwo groups we attempted to identify not onlywhat is part of their professional discourse butalso what is not. Both therapeutic and enforce-ment ideologies excluded gender and power re-lationships from their collaborative discourse.This can be accounted for in two ways. One isthat gender and power issues are conflict riddenand as such not part of the helping ideology. Theother is related to the patriarchal beliefs underly-ing both professional groups, which may makepower and gender too threatening to bear.

Our research indicates that any model seekingtrue cooperation needs to be at least two tiered.One level is technical and must be based on somelegislative or formal rule from which clear direc-tives for agency procedures can be derived. Suchprocedures would have to define the nature of thecollaboration, its level, the types of mandatoryinformation to be exchanged, and the legal andethical safeguards that must be in place to protectthis information. Additional functions will haveto be defined for coordinating collaboration andthe appropriate officials equipped professionallyand vested with legal authority. Specific proce-dures will have to be grounded in the wisdom oflocal practice but enacted within the legal frame-work mentioned here. The collaborative modelwill have to spell out periodic mandatory inter-action, proper forms for referral and reporting,and procedures and standards for best practicesin specific domains. Finally, some channels mustbe established for mutual grievance proceduresand problem solving.

The second level is more complex and basedon a reflective stance toward each professionalgroup. To bring police and social workers into acollaborative relationship it is necessary to raiseand confront ideological, professional, and prac-tical issues and a history of mistrust and politi-cal constraints inside and outside the organiza-tions (James-Hanman, 2001; Liu, 2004; Mizrahi& Rosenthal, 2001; Reitan, 1998). Reconstruct-ing professional and organizational ideology andmodus operandi is always a complex mission

that cannot be reduced to the level of proceduresor efficient models. Intimate violence is a multi-faceted problem and the recognition of the needfor interorganizational collaboration is relativelynew. To succeed in bringing about such collab-oration, there must be constant awareness to thepitfalls and difficulties that lie ahead, and mutu-ally suitable ways of coping with them must becontinually identified and acted on.

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