Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T11:51:54.685Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - A Way Ahead

Re-envisioning the Relationship between Evidence-Based Policing and the Police Craft

from Part I - Taking Stock of Evidence-Based Policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2023

By
James J. Willis  and
Heather Toronjo
Edited by
David Weisburd ,
Tal Jonathan-Zamir ,
Gali Perry  and
Badi Hasisi
David Weisburd
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and George Mason University, Virginia
Tal Jonathan-Zamir
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Gali Perry
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Badi Hasisi
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Get access

Summary

Evidence-based policing (EBP) is perhaps the most significant police reform movement of the last 30 years. Most notable for identifying what does or does not work, and for trying to integrate science into policing, much of EBP’s focus remains on program evaluation methods and investigating crime prevention strategies. This vision for policing often characterizes the craft of police work as an obstacle rather than a useful contributor to science. This is changing, as proponents of EBP begin to embrace a wider variety of methods to assess a broader range of outcomes, and to treat both science and experience as necessary elements of successful police reform. In this chapter, we recommend that EBP focus more attention on assessing the choices that patrol officers make in their everyday encounters with the public. Drawing on a case study of a neighbor dispute, we show how EBP could benefit from listening to practioners and learning what their rich experiences have taught them about how best to respond. We also suggest ways that research might help generate knowledge on the essential normative or moral questions that characterize street-level discretion, and thus combine knowledge about what works with knowledge about doing the right thing.

Keywords

Craftexperiencescienceevidence-based policingexpertiseintuitionpolicyvaluesmoral decision-makingethics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Future of Evidence-Based Policing , pp. 64 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alpert, G., & Rojek, J. (2011). Frontline police officer assessments of risks and decision making during encounters with offenders. CEPS Briefing Paper, 5, 1–6.Google Scholar
Bayley, D. H. (1986). The tactical choices of police patrol officers. Journal of Criminal Justice, 14(4), 329–348.Google Scholar
Bayley, D. H., & Bittner, E. (1984). Learning the skills of policing. Law and Contemporary Problems, 47, 35–59.Google Scholar
Bittner, E. (1983). Legality and workmanship: Introduction to Control in the police organization. In Punch, M. (Ed.), Control in the police organization (pp. 1–11). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bittner, E. (1990). Aspects of police work. Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Black, D. (1971). The social organization of arrest. Stanford Law Review, 23, 1087–1111.Google Scholar
Bonner, H. S. (2016). The decision process: Police officers’ search for information in dispute encounters. Policing and Society, 28(1), 90–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2016.1147040Google Scholar
Brown, J., Belur, J., Tompson, L., McDowall, A., Hunter, G., & May, T. (2018). Extending the remit of evidence-based policing. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 20(1), 38–51.Google Scholar
Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter: Why social science inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, J. B., &Mastrofski, S. D. (2004). Suspect searches: Assessing police behavior under the US Constitution. Criminology and Public Policy, 3(3), 315–62.Google Scholar
Greene, J. R. (2014). New directions in policing: Balancing prediction and meaning in research. Justice Quarterly, 31(2), 193–228.Google Scholar
Greene, J.R. (2019). Critic: Which evidence? What knowledge? Broadening information about their police and their interventions. In Weisburd, D. & Braga, A. A. (Eds.), Police innovation: Contrasting perspectives (pp. 457–484). Second edition. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834.Google Scholar
Harmon, R. (2016). Why arrest?. Michigan Law Review, 113(3), 307–64.Google Scholar
Jonathan-Zamir, T., &Weisburd, D. (this volume). Practitioners’ inclination to rely on experience: What does this mean for evidence-based policing? In Weisburd, D., Jonathan, T., Perry, G. & Hasisi, B., (Eds.), The Future of Evidence-Based Policing. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jonathan- Zamir, T., Weisburd, D., Dayan, M., & Zisso, M. (2019). The proclivity to rely on professional experience and evidence-based policing: Findings from a survey of high-ranking officers in the Israel police. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 46(10), 1456–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854819842903Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515–526.Google Scholar
Kelling, G. L. (1999). Broken windows and police discretion. U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Klein, G. (2008). Naturalistic decision making. Human Factors, 50, 456–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klockars, C. (1985). The idea of police. Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Lindblom, C. E., & Cohen, D. K. (1979). Usable knowledge: Social science and social problem solving. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lum, C. (2009). Translating police research into practice. Police Foundation.Google Scholar
Lum, C., & Koper, C. (2017). Evidence-based policing: Translating research into practice. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lum, C., Telep, C. W., Koper, C., & Grieco, J. (2012). Receptivity to research in policing. Justice Research and Policy, 14(1), 61–95.Google Scholar
Lumsden, K., & Goode, J. (2018). Policing research and the rise of the ‘evidence-base’: Police officer and staff understandings of research, its implementation, and ‘what works.’ Sociology, 52(4), 813–829.Google Scholar
Mastrofski, S. D. (1988). Community policing as reform. In Greene, J. R. & Mastrofski, S. D. (Eds.), Community policing: Rhetoric or reality? (pp. 47–67). Praeger.Google Scholar
Mastrofski, S. D. (1996). Measuring police performance in public encounters. In Hoover, L. T. (Ed.), Quantifying quality in policing (pp. 207–241). Police Executive Research Forum.Google Scholar
Mastrofski, S. D. (2018). Do the right thing: Evaluating street-level policing [Inaugural Mastrofski Lecture]. George Mason University.Google Scholar
Mears, D. P., & Bacon, S. (2009). Improving criminal justice through better decision making: Lessons from the medical system. Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(2), 142–154.Google Scholar
Moore, M. H. (1995). Learning while doing: Linking knowledge to policy in the development of community policing and violence prevention in the United States. In Wikstrom, P. O., Clarke, R. V. & McCord, J. (Eds.), Integrating crime prevention strategies: Propensity and opportunity (pp. 301–33). The National Council for Crime Prevention.Google Scholar
Moore, M. H. (2006). Critic: improving police through expertise, experience, and experiments. In Weisburd, D. & Braga, A. A. (Eds.), Police innovation: Contrasting perspectives (pp. 322–338). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muir, W. K. (1977). Police: Streetcorner politicians. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Neyroud, P., & Weisburd, D. (2014). Transforming the police through science: The challenge of ownership. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 8, 287–293.Google Scholar
Park, Y. (2018). How research is translated to policy and practice in the criminal justice system. nij.ojp.gov. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/how-research-translated-policy-and-practice-criminal-justice-systemGoogle Scholar
Ratcliffe, J. H., Taylor, R. B., &Fisher, R. (2019). Conflicts and congruencies between predictive policing and the patrol officer’s craft. Policing and Society, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2019.1577844Google Scholar
Reiss, A. J. (1971). The police and the public. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, R. J. (2010). Gold standard myths: Observations on the experimental turn in quantitative criminology. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 26(4), 489–500.Google Scholar
Sampson, R. J., Winship, C., & Knight, C. (2013). Translating causal claims: Principles and strategies for policy-relevant criminology. Criminology and Public Policy, 12, 587.Google Scholar
Sherman, L. (1992). Policing domestic violence: Experiments and dilemmas. Free Press.Google Scholar
Sherman, L. (1998). Evidence-based policing. The Police Foundation.Google Scholar
Sherman, L. (2013). The rise of evidence-based policing: targeting, testing, and tracking. Crime and Justice, 42(1), 377–451.Google Scholar
Sherman, L. (2015). A tipping point for ‘totally evidenced policing:’ Ten ideas for building an evidence-based police agency. International Criminal Justice Review, 25(1), 11–29.Google Scholar
Sparrow, M. (2016). Handcuffed: what holds policing back and the keys to reform. Brooking Institution Press.Google Scholar
Telep, C. W. (2016). Expanding the scope of evidence-based policing. Criminology and Public Policy, 15, 243–252.Google Scholar
Telep, C. W., &Lum, C. (2014). The receptivity of officers to empirical research and evidence-based policing: An examination of survey data from three agencies. Police Quarterly, 17(4), 359–385.Google Scholar
Thacher, D. (2001). Policing is not a treatment: Alternatives to the medical model of police research. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38(4), 387–415.Google Scholar
Thacher, D. (2006). The normative case study. American Journal of Sociology, 111(6), 1631–76.Google Scholar
Thacher, D. (2008). Research for the front lines. Policing and Society: An International Journal of Policy and Practice, 18(1), 46–59.Google Scholar
Thacher, D. (2018). The aspiration of scientific policing. Law and Social Inquiry, 44(1), 273–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsi.12367Google Scholar
Thacher, D. (2020). The learning model of use of force reviews. Law and Social Inquiry, 45(3), 755–786.Google Scholar
Toch, H. (1980). Mobilizing police expertise. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 452(1), 53–62.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, A. D. (1835/1990). Democracy in America. Vintage Classics. Random House.Google Scholar
Van de Ven, A. H. & Shomaker, M. S. (2002). Commentary: The rhetoric of evidence-based medicine. Health Care Management Review, 27(3), 89–91.Google Scholar
Von Hirsch, A. (1976). Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishments (No. 31685). www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/doing-justice-choice-punishmentsGoogle Scholar
Weisburd, D. (2010). Justifying the use of non-experimental methods and disqualifying the use of randomized controlled trials: challenging folklore in evaluation research in crime and justice. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 6(2), 209–227.Google Scholar
Weisburd, D., & Braga, A. A. (Eds.) (2019). Police innovation: Contrasting perspectives. Second edition. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weisburd, D., & Majmundar, M. K. (Eds.) (2018). Proactive policing: Effects on crime and communities. National Academies Press.Google Scholar
Willis, J. J. (2013). Improving police: What’s craft got to do with it? Police Foundation.Google Scholar
Willis, J. J., &Mastrofski, S. D. (2017). Understanding the culture of craft: Lessons from two police agencies. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40(1), 84–100.Google Scholar
Willis, J. J., &Mastrofski, S. D. (2018). Improving policing by integrating craft and science: What can patrol officers teach us about good police work? Policing and Society: An International Journal of Policy and Practice, 28(1), 27–44.Google Scholar
Willis, J. J., & Toronjo, H. (2019). Translating police research into policy: Some implications of the national academies report on proactive policing for policymakers and researchers. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 20(6), 617–31.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×