Researchers and Practitioners: Building Collaboration for Evidence-Based Policy-Making

Environmental crimes are complex and many environmental policy problems are classed as 'wicked' (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Head, 2010). Success stories in environmental crime are few. This is partly due to the area being a relatively new field (Wiernik, 2006; White, 2007, 2008) but also to a lack of rigorous evaluation of the genuine effect of individual policies - achievements are noted but not necessarily in a systematiC way. One of the potential chief benefits of increasing collaboration between researchers (within academia and government) and practitioners (here defined as government policy-makers and implementers) is in evaluation and evidence-based reform and policy-making (see, e.g., Sutherland et al., 2004; Watson, 2005; Pullin et al., 2009).