By Dianne Beer-Maxwell, Jon Blum, Timothy Bonadies, Jessica Herbert, and Peggy Schaefer

When performing official duties, law enforcement officers rely heavily on knowledge and skills learned during basic academy training. Entry-level law enforcement training is typically delivered in topic-centric classes with little or no connection between concepts, despite significant content overlap. For example, an understanding of search and seizure law is applicable across many contexts, including in lessons about motor vehicle stops, arrests, investigation, use of force, and interview and interrogation. Similarly, communication skills are needed across the board to be effective at interviewing people, de-escalating violent situations, and building relationships with the community. Existing research from other professions recommends integrating or reinforcing foundational and overlapping content consistently to help people retain critical knowledge and skills. The concept of integrating and reinforcing training content consistently has not previously been tested in law enforcement. The Academy Innovations project evaluates the results of reinforcing a critical foundational skill across multiple topics through use of an integrated curriculum in a basic academy setting. In this guide we will 1. introduce and define the concepts of integrated curriculum and retention interval; 2. explain a groundbreaking study that examined the effects of integrated curriculum on retention interval in five law enforcement academies; 3. present eight best practices for integrating curricula in law enforcement academies.   

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.  2023. 24p.

By Geoffrey C. Barnes, Simon Williams | Lawrence W. Sherman | Jesse Parmar | Paul House | Stephen A. Brown

In this article, we examine how communities can maximize deterrence of crime while minimizing cost and police intrusion on public life. Using 3,720 hot spot-days, we show that the “sweet spot” duration of police absence, to maximize the residual deterrence of crime, was a full four days after the last day of targeting police patrol at each hot spot. Over a 248-day period, we randomly reshuffled 15 separate hot spots daily into either treatment (targeted police patrols) or control (no targeted patrols) for that day, so that all locations repeatedly switched between randomly assigned groups. This repeated crossover design (Cochrane & Cox, 1957; Fienberg et al., 1980) included random periods of up to 20 consecutive days in which individual hot spots remained in the control condition, allowing us to measure how soon, and by what trajectory, the residual deterrent effect of targeted patrolling wore off. After four days without patrolling, there was a sudden termination of residual deterrence, marked by a 66% rise in offense frequency, and a 395% spike in our index of crime harm (House & Neyroud 2018), compared to the treatment condition. It may be possible to deploy less, not more policing and still maximize deterrent effects.

Sweet Spots Pre-Print 2020-07

By Lawrence W. Sherman

Police are often criticized fordoing “too much” or “too little” policing in various sit-uations. These criticisms amount to testable hypothe-ses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforce-ment would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence-based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy.Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police actiontargetedin a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent?(2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police actiontrack to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compli-ance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows:Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over-policing and under-policing?PolicyImplications:Theuseofthesequestionsinpub-lic dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath ofGeorge Floyd’s murder: (A) police killing people, (B)police stopping people, and (C) police under-patrolling 176SHERMANhigh-crime hot spots (while over-patrolling low-crime areas). One result of applying the three-Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low-violence areas. At The same time, this approach could also lead to reduc-tions in homicide by increasing stops in highest vio-lence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed.

 Criminology & Public Policy.2022;21:175–196

By Adrian Cherney, Emma Antrobus, Sarah Bennett, Bevan Murphy and Mike Newman

Evidence-based policing (EBP) advocates the use of scientific processes in police decision-making. This paper examines results from a survey of officers in the Queensland Police Service and the Western Australia Police on the uptake of and receptiveness towards EBP research. Using a combined dataset, the paper examines a variety of factors related to the perceived value and usefulness of academic and internal research, and individual and organisational barriers to the use of EBP research. It also explores whether leadership and EBP workshops influence the adoption of evidence-based practices.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2019. 18p.

By The Center for Public Safety Management

The Center for Public Safety Management, LLC (CPSM) was commissioned to review the operations of the Little Rock Police Department. While our analysis covered all aspects of the department’s operations, particular areas of focus of this study included: identifying appropriate staffing of the department given the workload, community demographics, and crime levels; the effectiveness of the organizational structure; and efficiency and effectiveness of division/unit processes. We analyzed the department workload using operations research methodology and compared that workload to staffing and deployment levels. We reviewed other performance indicators that enabled us to understand the implications of service demand on current staffing. Our study involved data collection, interviews with key operational and administrative personnel, focus groups with line level department personnel, on-site observations of the job environment, data analysis, comparative analysis, and the development of alternatives and recommendations. Based upon CPSM’s detailed assessment of the Little Rock Police Department, it is our conclusion that the department, overall, provides quality law enforcement services. The staff is professional and dedicated to the mission of the department. Through this report, we will strive to allow the reader to take a look inside the department to understand its strengths and its challenges. We sincerely hope that all parties utilize the information and recommendations contained herein in a constructive manner to make a fine law enforcement agency even better. As part of this Executive Summary, we offer general observations that we believe identify some of the more significant issues facing the department. Additionally, we also list key recommendations for consideration; we believe these recommendations will enhance organizational effectiveness. Some of these recommendations involve the creation of new job classifications; others involve the reassignment/repurposing of job duties to other sections and units. Oftentimes these types of recommendations require a substantial financial commitment on the part of a jurisdiction. In the case of the Little Rock Police Department, some may be accomplished by a realignment of workload and/or reclassification of job descriptions. It is important to note that in this report we will examine specific sections and units of the department and will offer a discussion of our observations and recommendations for each.

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  The list of recommendations is extensive. Should the Little Rock Police Department choose to implement any or all recommendations, it must be recognized that this process will not take just weeks or even months to complete, but perhaps years. The recommendations are intended to form the basis of a long-term improvement plan for the city and department. It is important that we emphasize that this list of recommendations, though lengthy, is common in our operational assessments of agencies around the country and should in no way be interpreted as an indictment of what we consider to be a fine department. While all of the recommendations are important, we suggest the Little Rock Police Department in conjunction with other city departments, the city council, the city manager, and members of the community decide which recommendations should take priority for implementation.   

Washington, DC: Center for Public Safety Management, 2022. 212p.

By The International Association of Chiefs of Police

This guide provides evidence-based policing practices (EBPP) for small, rural, and tribal agencies. The information comes from published research studies and working group conversations with command staff from various small, rural, and tribal agencies. In this guide, we use the terms small and rural or small, rural, and tribal broadly. The types of agencies that fall within these categories vary in terms of size, crime rates and types, and community characteristics. More than 12,000 local police agencies in the United States are “small” or serve small populations—75 percent employ fewer than 25 sworn officers, and 71 percent serve populations of fewer than 10,000 residents (Hyland and Davis 2019). However, not all small agencies serve rural communities. For example, some small agencies serve independent towns within densely populated metropolitan areas. On the other hand, some county police agencies with hundreds of sworn officers serve predominantly rural communities (e.g., Yang et al. 2018). Police agencies that serve tribal communities operate within a unique cultural, historical, and legal context. While we use the terms small, rural, and tribal somewhat interchangeably, the main guiding principle for police agencies trying to implement evidence-based policing is that strategies, interventions, and practices must be specific, tailored, and based on the best available information relevant to the department and jurisdiction. This is with the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.   

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2021. 64p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The movement for evidence-based policing in the 1990s came on the heels of the concept of evidence-based medicine in the same decade, but with far less clinical research to apply in policing practices. Since then, police research findings have been growing at a rapid rate and have been reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on repeated occasions in the last two decades. However, scant research findings have been reported at the country level, examining differences in police systems and policies across nations. In an era when the U.S. Congress has mandated better evidence to support public expenditure, the application of that mandate to overseas police development requires two responses. One is to do the best translation possible from existing research comparing differences between and within countries. The other is to map out research and action agendas that will promote the growth of new evidence to provide better guidance to policing in the international context. This report is the first of five by a committee with diverse kinds of policing expertise assembled for the task by the National Academies. All five of these reports will be completed at the request of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. The committee was charged by INL to identify good practices in police reform. INL’s goal is for our reports to help ensure that ongoing U.S. foreign assistance for organizational police capacity building is informed by research. At the same time, INL seeks guidance from lessons learned from practitioners. Linking the two kinds of knowledge is an ongoing challenge in policing. Addressing this challenge requires a consensus-building process that identifies and then weighs the strength of relevant evidence, debates the conclusions, and engages a wide group of users to ensure that its presentation is relevant and accessible to them. The project, beginning with this report, offers a unique opportunity to unite the research and practitioner perspectives for actionable recommendations that can strengthen the assistance provided for international policing.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2022. 120p.

By Christopher S. Koper, Cynthia Lum, James J. Willis, Dan J. Woods and Julie Hibdon

Using a multi-method approach in four large law enforcement agencies, both urban and suburban, this study examined many of the social, organizational, and behavioral aspects of implementing police technologies, so as to make recommendations for optimizing the use of technology in policing.

The study consisted of officer surveys, field observations, interviews, focus groups, and experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations. It assessed the uses and impacts of several information, analytical, surveillance, and forensic technologies, including information technology (IT), mobile computing, crime analysis, and license plate readers. The study determined how these technologies affected policing operations, management, agency structure, culture, efficiency, effectiveness, citizen interaction, and job satisfaction. Overall, the study found that technology’s effects on policing are complex and often contradictory.

The recommendations for police agencies include a broad base of participation in the planning and implementation process for a new technology, involving those who will be affected by the technology; providing pilot testing and refinement of early versions of a technology; ensuring appropriate training in the characteristics and uses of the technology; and having a systematic and continuous follow-up, in-service training, ongoing technical support, and adaptation to lessons learned.

Fairfax, VA: George Mason University, Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy 2016. 336p.

By Stephen Smallbone, William L. Marshall and Richard Wortley

Although child sexual abuse (CSA) is generally referred to as a distinct and singular phenomenon, there is a remarkably wide range of circumstances and events that may constitute CSA. Wide variations have been observed in the characteristics, modus operandi and persistence of CSA offenders, in the characteristics, circumstances and outcomes for victims, and in the physical and social settings in which CSA occurs. These multiple dimensions of CSA, and the wide variations within them, may at first seem to make the task of prevention overwhelmingly difficult, if not impossible. However, it is important to recognise that on virtually none of these dimensions is the incidence of CSA evenly distributed. Not all children are equally at risk of falling victim to sexual abuse, not all victims will be affected in the same way, not all adolescents and adults are equally at risk of becoming offenders, not all offenders are equally at risk of proceeding to a chronic pattern of offending, and not all physical and social environments present the same risk for CSA to occur. The first step towards developing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to preventing CSA is therefore to understand the patterns of variation within, and the interactions between, its key empirical dimensions. To the extent these patterns can be reliably identified, the focus of prevention strategies can be narrowed, and prevention resources can accordingly be prioritised. Notwithstanding the limitations of the current knowledge base, the main aim of the present chapter is to specify where, when, how, to whom and by whom CSA occurs.

Cullompton, Devon, UK: Willan Publishing, 2008. 267p.