Evidence-Based Policing and Crime Reduction

There have been calls for research evidence to be drawn into police practice. We examine evidence-based practice in the policing and crime reduction agenda, drawing on the experience of implementing problem-oriented policing in the UK and beyond. We suggest that that the development of such an agenda has been hampered by certain factors. Evidence is not routinely used by police officers (or partnerships) developing strategies to deal with crime problems who prefer to deliver traditional (law enforcement) responses. There is a limited knowledge base on which practitioners can draw in developing responses to crime problems, and the nature of evidence about what is effective is contested amongst academics. Whilst welcoming the moves to incorporate evidence in policing, we caution against excessive optimism about what can be achieved and make some recommendations for those engaged in developing evidence-based practice. Introduction Alongside other areas of public policy and practice, there have been calls for research ‘evidence’ to be drawn in policing (ACPO/Centrex, 2006; Flanagan’s Review of Policing, Policing Green Paper, 2008). The critical collection, analysis and presentation of evidence are, of course, part of the stock-in-trade of policing. Evidence is used, for example, to determine if an offence has been committed, to suggest who might have committed it and to try to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. But this is not what is being referred to in ‘evidence based policing’. Rather, ‘evidence-based policing’ is analogous to evidence-based medicine (see Nutley et al., 2002; Davies et al., 2000). As with its medical counterpart, evidence-based policing refers to the application of measures on the basis of robust evidence of their effectiveness in dealing with real (rather than supposed) problems. As Sherman says (1998: 3–4), ‘evidence-based policing uses research to guide practice and evaluate practitioners. It uses the best evidence to shape the best practice.’ Evidence-based policing assumes that we should adopt a sceptical attitude towards traditional ways of working for which there is no systematic evidence of effectiveness. The evidence-based movement in medicine has cast doubt on conventional wisdom; for example, making babies lie on the sides or stomachs, by looking for hard evidence about its actual effects rather than its assumed effects. It turns out that far fewer cot deaths occur where babies are put on their backs and this is now how new parents are advised to place their children in cribs and cots. In just the same way, evidence-based policing begins by calling for empirical tests of both established and innovative policies and practices. Various developments in policing have emerged as efforts to deliver evidencebased policing, amongst which the National Intelligence Model (NIM) is one clear example. This paper focuses, however, on problem-oriented policing (POP). It does so in part because POP has a longer history than the NIM, in part because there has been more research on the implementation of POP than of the NIM, in part because POP has enjoyed a greater presence than the NIM in countries other than the UK (although the NIM may soon overtake it), and in part because POP is more wholeheartedly committed to participating in the evidence-based public service reform agenda than the NIM. Indeed, Sherman (1998) argues that problem-oriented policing is the major source of evidence-based policing emphasizing assessment of problem-solving responses as a key to the process. In the UK, POP has over the past five years metamorphosed from problemoriented policing to problem-oriented partnership, and hence its fate as a vehicle for developing and delivering evidence based responses to crime problems has a significance that includes but extends beyond the work of statutory police services. ‘Problem-oriented partnerships’ describe larger or smaller groups (including statutory police services, but extending beyond them) that aim to reduce, ameliorate or remove significant community crime-related crime and disorder issues that it is the responsibility and/or interest of members to address them. The distinctive methodology of problem-oriented policing and partnership ostensibly involves the exploration, application and creation of evidence directed at the delivery of effective responses to real problems of community concern. The experience of efforts to adopt problem-oriented policing and partnership over the past three decades is used here as a basis for exploring the prospects and possibilities for making use of and benefitting from an evidence-based approach to policing more generally. The theory of evidence use in POP By far, the best-known model for problem-oriented policing and partnership is SARA: Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment. SARA has been criticized for oversimplifying quite complex and difficult processes that rarely follow a simple linear path from one stage to the next. Yet SARA captures well the underlying logic and highlights the central role evidence use and evidence generation are supposed to play in POP. Scanning involves assembling evidence on the basis of which sustained specific problems of community concern are identified. Analysis involves efforts to identify necessary conditions for the problem to persist with a view to focusing responses on those conditions most open to practical, cost-effective long-term change. It also involves taking a critical look at past responses to the problem to try to work out what has not worked and why---remembering that the problems focused on are those that have been found to remain in spite of previous practices to deal with them. Response describes well-focused efforts to target interventions that will reduce the specific problem. It involves casting around for past well-researched effective responses to similar problems, and drawing on that evidence. And assessment refers to the cool-headed, objective evaluation of the implementation and outcome effectiveness of the strategies put in place in order to enable appropriate lessons to be learned and passed on to others. Assessments thereby most clearly contribute to the evidence base, although scanning and analysis may also do so as problems are more clearly defined and their sources understood. Scanning, analysis and assessment all involve the collation and systematic analysis of data. They entail a form of action research, not unlike that used, at its best, in evidence-based health care. Although not explicitly couched in problem oriented terms, a variety of initiatives relating to repeat victimization illustrate the potential of POP. Scanning in the Kirkholt estate revealed that repeat incidents accounted for a high proportion of the total number of burglaries (see Forrester et al., 1988, 1990) (and later work building on Kirkholt has shown that the patterns found there are found in pretty much all places and for pretty much all offences). Analysis revealed that the offences tended to occur quickly, that properties targeted tended to be insecure and that prepayment meters were especially attractive targets (and later work has again built on this to