The overarching purpose of this proposal is to create a new partnership between UK and Japan-based academic and professional networks in the field of volunteering in law enforcement and public safety, form lasting links between UK and Japan and establish a foundation for collaboration beyond the project. Volunteering in law enforcement and public safety is an emergent research agenda in both the UK and Japan, yet significant opportunities exist to learn from the cultural contexts concerning how law enforcement agencies engage with the community to achieve their goals and enable citizens to protect people from harm. The applicants to the proposed project are at the forefront of recent academic enquiry into volunteering in law enforcement and public safety in the respective countries and have strong networks across academia and into different policing/volunteering contexts. They are positioned to pump-prime UK-Japan collaborations across volunteering in law enforcement and community safety, each holding significant experience, expertise and knowledge in the field which holds value to the strategic and practical development of volunteering in each site. Citizens have assumed a prominent role in the delivery of policing in the UK since before the development of organised law enforcement (Britton and Callender, 2018), with the Special Constabulary having deep historical roots. Special Constables are unpaid volunteers who, after successful completion of their training, hold the same warranted powers as 'Regular', paid police officers (Callender et al., 2018a). More recently, however, a multitude of volunteering opportunities have been created within policing for citizens to contribute to meeting policing objectives (Callender et al., 2018b) and a recent benchmarking exercise conducted across England and Wales outlined how there are over 38,000 volunteers operating within policing organisations, including 11,992 Special Constables and 8,265 Police Support Volunteers (Britton et al., 2018). There are also an estimated 40,000+ volunteers in other volunteer roles closely working with policing, including Community Speedwatch, Neighbourhood Watch, victim support services, street pastors and similar roles. In September 2003, the 'Action Plan for Realizing a Powerful Society against Crime' was launched in Japan, led by the Prime Minister. By 2014, there were some 48,000 crime prevention organisations with approximately 3 million members, meaning that 1 in 38 adults in Japan is a crime prevention volunteer (Hino, 2018). Most crime prevention volunteer organizations consist of local residents and parents of elementary school children and are independent of the police, requiring an intimate partnership between citizens and the police. To widen participation in volunteering activities, Hino (2018) advocates a 'Plus Bouhan' (Plus Crime Prevention) approach which adds aspects of crime prevention to daily activities in the community. Volunteering in law enforcement and public safety are therefore argued to be prominent in both sites, though different in the relative level of involvement of citizens at protecting people from harm. To enable the exchange of research and commercial knowledge, collaborative activities will be conducted over a one-year period. The activities conducted during the formative stages of the partnership include: - two cultural exchange trips, with academic delegations traveling between the UK and Japan; - collaborative analysis of qualitative data to explore synergies in ideologies, strategies, leadership and practices concerning volunteerism within law enforcement and public safety; - a symposium outlining the results and value of the partnership will be conducted at an international conference; and - local activities in each country in the form of presentations and briefings to local communities and police forces to embed learning and knowledge from the exchange.