Norman E. Taylor*
With the release of this issue 4(2) of the Journal of Community Safety & Well-Being [CSWB], we begin our lead-up to the 5th International Conference on Law Enforcement and Public Health [LEPH2019]. This coming October, several hundred multi-disciplinary professionals and academics will gather, some again and many for the first time, with shared hopes of continuing to advance collaborative and innovative solutions to some of global society’s most urgent and pressing problems and opportunities.
We will publish another lead-up issue in advance of the event, and we will dedicate at least one subsequent issue, and likely several more, to featuring the great range of international work showcased, discussed, and refined throughout that week in Scotland. The agenda is shaping up to be epic in its scope, and we consider it fortunate that over 100 of the scheduled presenters and panellists have expressed an interest in publishing their papers with us. Our publishing team has begun an active outreach in hopes of securing many of those papers, and we are encouraging all involved to consider publishing early to be part of the pre-conference buzz.
Two of the papers featured in this current issue fall directly into that buzz category. One originates from a research team in Australia addressing unique challenges related to investigating intimate partner violence among LGBTQ communities. The other is from a team in Wales showcasing their emerging and innovative work providing training to police on adverse childhood experience (ACE)- and trauma-informed interventions.
The other two papers originate from Canada and are not directly tied to LEPH. However, it is worth noting that both of these papers also take aim on some of the urgent themes that will be explored in Edinburgh: one approaches location patterns in intimate partner violence from a new theoretical angle, hoping to bring greater understanding to the subject; the other highlights some of the challenges and unintended consequences of emerging drug decriminalization policy, inspired by Canada’s legalization of cannabis less than a year ago. As always, we are grateful to all of these authors and researchers for permitting us to bring their work to our growing international audience.
Our Journal team is also very honoured to have been selected to design and moderate a Major Session to be delivered at the upcoming LEPH2019 conference. Under the session title Learning from Canada’s Accelerating Journey toward Collaborative CSWB, the 90-minute segment will trace the early adoption and rapid proliferation of multi-sector, whole-of-government solutions over the past decade, through to the recent legislated mandate requiring all municipalities in the province of Ontario to complete collaborative community safety and well-being plans. It will feature some of the key champions whose work has helped to shape the necessary policy and practice frameworks to make these approaches both possible and sustainable in a Canadian context. It will also feature case studies delivered by those directly involved in community-level CSWB.
For this Editor-in-Chief, there is a somewhat poetic tone to the opportunity to be part of LEPH Edinburgh and to lead this session before an international audience gathered in Scotland. Nine years ago, much of the early thinking that would soon become the CSWB movement across Canada gained considerable early inspiration from what a dozen of us Canadians learned and witnessed during a one-week field study we conducted in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We look forward to being reacquainted with some of those gracious and generous hosts. We are also excited to meet many more of our authors, reviewers, and readers from around the globe. And we look forward to constructing new knowledge together to ensure that collaborative solutions continue to grow at a time when our world needs them more than ever.
The author has continuing business interests that include providing advisory services to communities, police services, and related human service agencies.
*Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being.
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Journal of CSWB, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 2019